Nuri Kino was born in Midyat, in southeastern Turkey. In 1974, his family moved to Sweden.

Neither of his parents could read or write. They dreamed their children would one day speak for others.

He ran his own restaurants. He trained and worked as a medical administrator. At 33, he became a journalist.

His investigations have exposed human trafficking, organized crime and the abuse of children. He has documented the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities for nearly three decades. His books include Den motvillige journalisten (The Reluctant Journalist) and The Line in the Sand, a novel written with American journalist and author David Kushner. Published in 2012 and set among the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac Christians of northern Iraq, it foresaw the genocide that came two years later. He was one of two producers and directors of the Swedish television series Assyriska. Its film version won the Golden Palm at the Beverly Hills Film Festival.

He has won three Guldspaden awards, Sweden’s top honor for investigative journalism, two Ikaros awards and the European Parliament’s Journalist Prize in 2010. In 2025, he received the Kavian Prize and won bronze as Individual Changemaker of the Year at the Global Good Awards. In 2026, he was again one of seven finalists worldwide in that category. Global Bar Magazine named him Sweden’s most influential voice of the year in the international aid debate. He has also been named Role Model of the Year and Humanist of the Year in Sweden.

In June 2014, ISIS was driving families from their homes in Iraq. Kino launched a campaign on social media. It became A Demand For Action, a volunteer organization that delivers emergency aid and presses governments to act. ADFA sends aid shipments to Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Ukraine and Armenia. When floods tore through Valencia, Spain, in 2024, ADFA helped the victims. In Sweden, ADFA hands out food to people in need. It has given homeless people and crime victims a voice in Swedish newspapers.

Kino and ADFA took the fight to Washington. Invited to the White House, they met President Obama’s staff and were asked what the indigenous peoples of Iraq and Syria wanted. Their answer: the right to return to their ancestral homeland. That evening, September 10, 2014, Obama addressed the nation. “We cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands,” he said. His administration moved to stop the genocide against Christians and Yazidis. ADFA helped make the case.

Under President Trump, ADFA met White House staff and pushed for aid to go directly to local organizations and churches. It did.

ADFA also campaigned for U.S. recognition of the genocide against the Christian peoples of the Ottoman Empire. In 2019, the House and the Senate passed resolutions H.Res.296 and S.Res.150. They named Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites and other Christians. In 2021, President Biden formally recognized the Armenian Genocide.

At the United Nations, ADFA fought for the victims to be remembered. Human rights lawyer Ewelina Ochab, a longtime ally in the fight against persecution, drafted and proposed an international day for them. Poland put it before the General Assembly. ADFA helped promote it and co-signed a joint appeal in support. In May 2019, the UN adopted the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. It is marked every August 22.

On March 11, 2020, Sweden registered its first death from COVID-19. That same day, Kino launched #TellCorona. Official warnings were not reaching Sweden’s immigrant suburbs, the undocumented or the homeless. So he asked athletes, artists and TV hosts those communities knew and trusted to record short videos in their own languages. The campaign ran in 15 languages. ADFA volunteers handed out hygiene kits to displaced families in Lebanon. The videos spread across social media worldwide. The Sunday Times in Britain and Australian television covered the campaign, and Foreign Policy and TRT World reported on his warnings about the pandemic’s toll on immigrant communities. The European Commission featured #TellCorona as a good practice on its European Website on Integration.

In Stockholm, Kino founded Compassion Fashion, an ADFA initiative on Folkungagatan 65. Its gowns and tuxedos have been worn at the Cannes Film Festival, the Nobel Banquet and other galas. Every garment is donated. Volunteers run the boutique. Every sale funds humanitarian work. The shop doubles as an ADFA hub, and ADFA plans to take the model to other countries. Kino also founded Survivor Jewelry, a U.S. nonprofit where half the price of each bracelet goes to organizations helping people in need.

He writes for Newsweek and Svenska Dagbladet. The Sunday Times, Sky News, Fox News and The New York Times Magazine have interviewed him.

In 2025, he spoke before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. In 2026, he spoke at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C., its North Africa gathering in Casablanca, the Republic of Armenia Prayer Breakfast Forum in Yerevan and Forum Suryoyo in Frankfurt.

He speaks about persecution, human trafficking, human rights and the duty of the press. Most of all, he speaks about the families he has met. And about what anyone can do to help them.