This Year’s Nobel Peace Prize Reflects the #MeToo Era

Nadia Murad and Dr. Denis Mukwege have won the prize for their work combating sexual violence during wartime.
composite photo of doctor and woman
Dr. Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad.Left, from Torleif Svensson/Denis Mukwege Foundation Handout/EPA/REX/Shutterstock; right, by Silas Stein/A.P. Images.

Exactly a year after a New York Times exposé set off a global reckoning about sexual assault and harassment, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2018 Peace Prize to Nadia Murad and Dr. Denis Mukwege, two activists who have worked to spread awareness about sexual violence and rape during wartime.

An Iraqi from the Yazidi religious minority, Murad was abducted, raped, and tortured by ISIS when militants captured her small village, Kojo, near the Syrian border. When she was released in 2014, she went on to talk publicly about the systematic way ISIS used sexual violence with the goal of wiping out the Yazidi population in Iraq. In 2016, testimony from victims persuaded the State Department to formally recognize ISIS’s actions against the Yazidis as genocide.

Mukwege is a gynecologist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who has spent decades treating the injuries of women who faced gang rape during wartime. He founded a hospital in Bukavu, Congo, that has a special focus on treating victims. In speeches to the U.N., Mukwege is also known for publicizing internationally the gravity of the wounds inflicted on victims during wartime. After performing surgery on a patient, cheering and crying co-workers informed Mukwege that he won the prize. ”I could see in the faces of many women how they are happy to be recognized,” he said in an interview.

Murad and Mukwege’s selection as co-winners feels undeniably linked to the year of the #MeToo movement and a worldwide conversation about sexual violence, but it also connects to a scandal within the Nobel organization itself. This year, no Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded, after allegations of harassment and assault against a Swedish Academy member’s husband led to a spate of resignations. (The husband, Jean-Claude Arnault, has denied all allegations.) The Peace Prize committee is not connected to the Nobel Committee for Literature; though the same foundation funds and oversees all the awards, including the awards in physics, medicine, and economics, each prize is chosen by different groups with separate nominating processes.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s current chair is Berit Reiss-Andersen, a lawyer and former vice minister of justice in the Norwegian government. When asked after the ceremony if the #MeToo movement influenced her decision, she underlined the difference between sexual violence as a tool for war and what the movement tries to address. “What the #MeToo campaign addresses is how men and women interact in civil society, and predominantly in the workplace,” she said. “But in both cases, it is important that women speak up and tell us about the atrocities or what is going on.”

She also pointed out the role that the law has to play in protecting women and communities from sexual violence. “How you combat war crimes is by introducing legality instead of lawlessness. Impunity has to end; the perpetrators have to be investigated and prosecuted,” she said.