Nadia Murad won’t let the world forget that she was raped. In August 2014, she was among thousands of Yazidis, a minority religious and ethnic group, captured by the Islamic State in northern Iraq. Most of the men, including six of Murad’s brothers, were killed. Murad and many other women became sex slaves. She escaped after three months, eventually making her way to Germany. Today, she tells her story—to the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Congress, leaders in the Middle East, and other power brokers—because she views it as a potent weapon against her former captors. She’s called for international protection of minorities in the Islamic State’s crosshairs, for expanded refugee resettlement, and for defining what’s happened to the Yazidis as “the G-word”: genocide. (Photo credit: JULIAN STRATENSCHULTE/AFP/Getty Images)