Amal Clooney has given an emotion-charged interview about her crusade to take Islamic State to court.

The high-profile human rights lawyer has appeared on the Today program in the United States with her client, Yazidi woman Nadia Murad, to talk about her determination to take IS to court for human rights abuses.

Ms Murad was captured by IS and taken as a sex slave when she was only 19 and, according to Ms Clooney, raped multiple times, once to a point where she “fell unconscious”.

Ms Clooney said she simply saw it as her “job” to represent those who had suffered atrocities at the hands of IS.

“I can’t imagine anything worse being done by one human to another,” Ms Clooney said.

Ms Murad, now a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, said IS had killed six of her eight brothers and her mother, when they stormed her town in northern Iraq during the Yazidi genocide in 2014.

Watch Ms Clooney’s emotional interview

She was taken to an IS stronghold in Mosul, before she managed to escape, make her way to a refugee camp and eventually find asylum in Germany.

Ms Clooney appeared before the UN last week to launch her campaign and where she told her audience that she was strangely ashamed to have to make her address.

“I wish I could say that I was proud to be here, but I’m not,” Ms Clooney told the UN at the time.

“I’m ashamed as a human being that we ignore their cries for help.”

Ms Clooney said both she and Ms Murad had been subjected to death threats from IS for their stance, but that the desire to combat the terror group’s brutality far outweighed the risks.

“I did feel a sense of outrage,” Ms Clooney told the NBC show.

“It’s been harrowing to hear the testimony of girls as young as 11 and 12, what’s happened to them. And still we haven’t done anything about them.”

Ms Murad said she had persevered with the crusade in the face of huge risks to give hope to other victims.

“Yes I put my own life at risk, but i don’t have a life without giving hop to other victims,” she said through a translator.