MP Brendan O’Hara travelled to the United Nations headquarters in New York this week as the guest of a young Yazidi woman, Nadia Murad.
He witnessed her appointment as the Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
The Argyll and Bute MP’s involvement in Nadia’s story first began in February last year when a constituent contacted him to ask he would be willing to meet Nadia in Westminster to hear about her horrific ordeal at the hands of Daesh in Iraq.
Mr O’Hara agreed and a few weeks later 23 year-old Nadia was speaking to a committee room of MPs and Peers about her experience.
She described how Daesh attacked her village in northern Iraq in 2014, shooting young boys and men in cold blood.
After managing to escape to Germany Nadia has been a relentless advocate for Yazidi victims and has met with heads of State and global leaders to raise the plight of the Yazidi people in Iraq still enslaved by the regime.
Mr O’Hara said: “I feel very honoured and humbled to be invited to Nadia’s appointment ceremony as Goodwill ambassador to the UN.
When I first met Nadia, I was struck by her amazing strength and determination to make sure her story was heard by the outside world. Her story is a harrowing one and she is without doubt one of the bravest people I have ever met.
“We owe it to her to listen to her story and not turn away. It is a story the world has to hear.”
Yesterday’s ceremony also featured speeches from Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon and Amal Clooney, international human rights barrister and attorney for Nadia.
As a guest? I then take it that not one penny of tax payers money was used?