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Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi has consistently used the law to fight for women, children, and victims of government repression. The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner has led efforts to change Iran’s discriminatory laws against women, to provide more protection for street children, and to free those detained for expressing their opposition to the government. She has continued her advocacy despite detention, suspension from legal practice, and repeated threats to her security.


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Nobel Prize for Iranian Activist Welcomed
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Her work rests on the belief that international human rights standards need not contradict the principles of an Islamic society. While Iran’s political environment is often portrayed as a battle between reformists and conservatives, Ms. Ebadi has chosen to stay out of the political fray, always arguing that the struggle for basic human rights should not depend on who controls parliament or the security forces.

In 1996 Human Rights Watch honored Ms. Ebadi as a leading human rights defender for her contribution to the cause of human rights in Iran.

During the 1990s Ms. Ebadi published several books that used international human rights standards to analyze domestic Iranian law. In the face of government obstacles, she succeeded in creating one of the first officially recognized, truly independent, nongovernmental human rights organizations in Iran: the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPRC).

In 1999 Ms. Ebadi was the lead attorney on a number of cases that highlighted the use of violence and repression by Iranian judiciary and security forces to silence students’ increasingly vocal challenges to government practices.

She represented the family of Ezzat Ebrahim-Nejad, a student killed during the 1999 Tehran University protests. Her work on his family’s behalf exposed the link between vigilante groups and highly placed government officials. This work led to her arrest and detention in 2000.

Ms. Ebadi also served as the attorney for the family of Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, who were among a number of dissidents killed in 1998 and 1999. In 2000 she represented women’s rights activists Mehrangiz Kar and Shahla Lahiji, who were jailed for attending a conference in Berlin focusing on democratization in Iran. After consulting with her clients’ families, she made the decision to resign from the case, stating: “Whenever the courts of Iran are prepared to comply with the law, I will withdraw my resignation and again become their counsel.”

This year Ms. Ebadi, 56, and a small group of lawyers formed an organization, the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, to provide legal aid to the families of imprisoned journalists and student activists.

Giving advice to a young human rights activist, she once said: “Have confidence, have courage, and know that if we work hard, our struggle will be victorious.”