The Royal Swedish Academy announced the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize on October 6, 2023 for Iranian women’s rights advocate, Narges Mohammadi. According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee citation, she has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all. Her struggles have encouraged all the women around the world, who are living in conditions where they are systematically discriminated, to continue their fight for equality, dignity, and freedom. The Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi has been seen as a tribute to the “Zan-Zendegi-Azadi (woman-life-freedom)” movement in Iran, which has rocked the clerical establishment in 2022. Narges Mohammadi is the second woman from Iran after Shirin Ebadi, who had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Narges is the 19th woman to receive this covetous prize.
Narges Mohammadi was born in 1972, in Zanjan, Iran. She earned her degree in physics from the Qazvin International University to become a professional engineer. While she was studying in the university, she had started writing articles on women’s rights in the student newspaper. She was put behind the bars for this twice at two meetings of the political student group Tashakkol Daaneshjuyi Roshangaraan (Enlightened Student Group).
Narges Mohammadi worked as a journalist for newspapers. She has written and published a book of political essays titled The Reforms, The Strategy and The Tactics. She then joined the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC) run by the Nobel laureate, Shirin Ebadi. Later, she rose to the position of vice president of DHRC.
Narges Mohammadi has still been continuing her human rights work in Iran. She has been actively involved in Iranian women’s rights and is also against the death penalty and other harsh sentences meted out to prisoners in Iran.
During her first imprisonment in 2011, for the protests, she did not give up on her motto and organised protest against the government along with the women prisoners. Mohammadi is currently in Iran’s Evin House of Detention. She has been serving a 16-year sentence that began in 2015, over charges including propaganda against the state.
The Iranian Government has arrested Mohammadi 13 times, convicted her five times and sentenced her for a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. She published a book, titled White Torture, in September 2022, when she was released to go home due to a medical emergency. The book is about solitary confinement. It included interviews with other Iranian women who had experienced the punishment.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that the award highlighted the courage and determination of Iranian women in the face of reprisals, intimidation, violence, and detention.
Other Awards
Apart from Nobel Peace Prize, Mohammadi has won many honours and awards including the Alexander Langer Award (2009), named after the peace activist Alexander Langer; Andrei Sakharov Prize (2018) from American Physical Society; the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award (2023); and the 2023 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, among others. She has also featured as one of BBC’s 100 inspiring and influential women of the year 2022.
About Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Prize worth 11 million Swedish Kronor would be presented to her on December 10, 2023, the death anniversary of Alfred Nobel. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895. Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to politicians and world leaders much sooner in comparison to Nobel Prizes in other fields such as Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, etc. In other fields, the award is presented many years after the scientists’ work has been published. This is in order to gauge the impact of the research work.
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