Nujeen Mustafa

Nujeen Mustafa ( Nūjjayn Muṣṭafā; also transliterated Noujain Mustaffa) is a Kurdish Syrian refugee and activist with cerebral palsy. She was raised in Aleppo, Syria, and gained attention after traveling by wheelchair, fleeing conflict in the Syrian Civil War, before arriving and resettling in Germany. She was listed as one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2018, and her story was featured on the television show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. In 2019 she became the first disabled person to brief the United Nations Security Council and was the recipient of the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism from Human Rights Watch. She has co-authored two books about her experiences. She resides in Wesseling where she attends a school for those with disabilities.

Life Mustafa was raised in Kobane, Syria, with her sisters and brother as part of a Kurdish family. Her father, who is unable to read, sold sheep and goats while her brother dug water wells. She was born with cerebral palsy and spent the majority of her life "confined to her family's fifth-floor apartment in Aleppo." According to reporting by National Geographic, their building had no elevator, and so leaving the apartment could only be accomplished by having someone carry her to the ground floor.

Mustafa could not attend school while in Syria, as there were no facilities to accommodate those with disabilities. She learned English from watching television, including the American soap opera Days of Our Lives.

Beginning in 2014, at age 16, Mustafa traveled from Syria to Gaziantep in Turkey, and finally Germany as a refuge from the Syrian Civil War. she lived in Wesseling and attended a school for those with disabilities. In 2019 she became the first person with a disability to brief the United Nations Security Council on her experiences during the war in Syria and policy regarding disabled persons. She has also given talks at the Palace of Nations in Geneva, TEDx in Iraq and the United Kingdom, and the presentation of the Nansen Refugee Award in 2017. She accepted the award at a ceremony in Australia in April of the same year.

Last Week Tonight In 2015, Mustafa was featured on a segment of the television show Last Week Tonight hosted by John Oliver, covering the treatment of refugees, and which included segments from interviews she had given to the BBC. The segment also featured a one-off scene between Days of Our Lives characters EJ DiMera and Sami Brady. These had been reported as Mustafa's favorite characters in the show, and the former had been killed off in a previous episode. The character EJ addressed Mustafa, recognizing the difficulty of her journey as a refugee and calling her "our kind of people".

Publications Mustafa has published two books, both co-authored with British journalist and writer Christina Lamb: