There are plenty of reasons to love Amal Clooney: her effortless style, her incredible grace, and of course her #marriagegoals relationship with George Clooney. But Amal’s mission to take on ISIS in court is definitely the most inspiring.
Clooney recently met Nadia Murad, a young girl of the minority Yazidi religion, whose family was killed by ISIS. According to NBC News and the Today show, “In the last two years … ISIS has killed over 5,000 Yazidis and 3,200 of them are still captive.” Murad herself was a former sex slave for an ISIS commander, and it was Murad who convinced Clooney to take on her case and the cases of thousands of other who have become ISIS captives.
“I can’t imagine anything worse being done by one human to another,” Clooney said of the terrorist organization’s horrific acts against women and the religious minority group. “It’s been harrowing to hear girls as young as 11 or 12 talk about what’s happened to them, still we haven’t been able to do anything about it,” she told Cynthia McFadden of NBC News.
“There are those who say ISIS doesn’t need to be brought to court, ISIS needs to be bombed out of existence,” McFadden said to Clooney, who responded eloquently, “It’s not enough. You can’t kill an idea that way … one of the ways to take action against them is to expose their brutality and their corruption and partly, you can do that through trials.”
Before taking on Murad’s case, Clooney discussed the idea with her husband, telling McFadden, the two of them “are aware of some of the risks involved … he met Nadia too, and I think he was moved for the same reasons, he understood … this is my work.”
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The Yazidis, many of whom are currently in a refugee camp in Greece, look to Murad as their savior. “They all said things like she is the future, she is our only hope,” Clooney said after her visit to the refugee camp. Murad, too understands the position she has put herself in, as she was recently named a UN Goodwill Ambassador. “I put my own life at risk, but I don’t have a life without giving hope to other victims,” she said. Despite the amount of the very specific death threats she has received from ISIS, Murad is determined to continue with her mission
“It’s a great responsibility,” said Clooney of Murad. “But I think what she’s doing is amazing.” As do we. Murad is set to speak at the UN General Assembly today, with Clooney by her side.