SHIRIN EBADI

 

SHIRIN EBADI (b. 1947)

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, writer, and teacher, who received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights, especially those of women and children in Iran. She was the first Iranian and also the first female Peace Prize Laureate from the Islamic World.

Before October of 2003, most people outside of Iran - and many people inside that country - had never heard of Shirin Ebadi. She was not a major world leader, negotiating to end wars or topple repressive dictators. She was not a high-profile diplomat, traveling the globe and fighting against poverty or injustice. Ebadi was, and is, an Iranian Muslim lawyer who has devoted her life to improving the lives of victims of human rights abuses, particularly women and children in her home country. A human right is any right considered to belong to all people, including the rights to life and liberty, self-expression, and equality before the law.

Ebadi was born in the city of Hamadan in northwestern Iran on 21 June, 1947. Her father was the head of Hamedan’s Registry Office, one of the country’s first lecturers in commercial law who has published a number of books. Ebadi chose to follow in her father's footsteps, training to be a lawyer at the University of Tehran. Her family relocated to Tehran, the capital of Iran, when she was one year old.

Ebadi earned her law degree in only three and a half years, graduating in 1969. That same year she took an apprenticeship at the Department of Justice and became one of the first women judges in Iran. While serving as a judge, she also earned a doctorate in private law from the University of Tehrān (1971). From 1975 to 1979 she was head of the city court of Tehrān.

After the 1978-79 revolution which deposed the shah and instated a conservative Islamic government, women were no longer allowed to have such important jobs as judges because the new leaders believed that Islam forbids it. Ebadi was forced to give up her position and  to become a clerk of the court.

After she and other female judges protested this action, they were given higher roles within the Department of Justice but were still not allowed to serve as judges. Ebadi resigned in protest. She then chose to practice law but was initially denied a lawyer’s license. In 1992, after years of struggle, she finally obtained a license to practice law and began to do so. Her law office became an advocacy center for civil and human rights. In court Ebadi defended women and dissidents and represented many people who, like her, had run afoul of the Iranian government.

Unlike many of her fellow intellectuals - teachers, scientists, artists - she chose to stay in Iran during a difficult period when anyone suspected of disagreeing with the Islamic state could be arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Her decision to stay and fight for change while keeping within the bounds of the law earned her the respect of many in her country. Under the ayatollah's repressive government, which enforced its laws by inflicting violence on and withholding basic rights from the people, Ebadi had plenty of battles to fight.

Through her writings and practice, Ebadi soon emerged as a leading advocate in the human rights and civil rights movements in Iran. In the meantime, Ebadi also taught law at the University of Tehran as a part-time lecturer, mentoring international students in human rights internship programs. During these years, she was among the academic and intellectual circles that paved the way to the reform movement manifested in the May 1997 landslide presidential election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami. As an attorney, Ebadi defended many cases concerning human rights and freedom of expression of political prisoners, challenging the religious authorities' interpretations of Islam while demonstrating the need for an overall reform of the Iranian religious courts and justice system.

At many points throughout her career, Ebadi has paid a high price for her views and her actions. Investigating cases involving the deaths of Iranian intellectuals and reformers in 2000, Ebadi obtained evidence that some religious leaders and conservative politicians had been behind the murders. She was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for more than three weeks, held in solitary confinement.  Found guilty of ‘disturbing public opinion,’ she was given a prison term, barred from practising law for five years, and fined, although her sentence was later suspended.

Ebadi has received numerous death threats, which increased by thirty times after she won the Nobel Prize. She has been attacked in Iranian newspapers and labeled a traitor. She was forced by protestors to stop giving a speech at Al-Zahra women's university in December of 2003. She has been criticized by some religious Muslims in Iran for not wearing the hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf, when she travels abroad and for shaking hands with men during such travels. Ebadi responds to such attacks by coolly repeating that she believes in Islam as a religion of peace, justice, and democracy. She points out that the Koran contains numerous references to democratic ideals, such as respecting the ideas and opinions of others.

Shirin Ebadi took up the struggle for fundamental human rights and especially the rights of women and children. She took part in the establishment of organizations that placed these issues on the agenda, and wrote books proposing amendments to Iran's succession and divorce laws. She also wanted to withdraw political power from the clergy and advocated the separation of religion and state.

Ebadi has helped found several groups that work to promote human rights in her country, including the Association for Support of Children's Rights in Iran and the Center for the Defense of Human Rights.

but Center it was closed by the government in 2008. Later that year her law offices were raided, and in 2009 Ebadi went into exile in the United Kingdom.

After many years of working to improve conditions for women and children in Iran, Ebadi's work began to attract international notice and recognition. She received the Rafto Prize from the Norwegian government in 2001 for her work promoting human rights and democracy. Two years later, to her great surprise, she was chosen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as the recipient of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.

In addition to her work as a lawyer, Ebadi has also worked as a lecturer at the University of Tehran and has written a number of books on the subject of human rights, including The Rights of the Child: A Study of Legal Aspects of Children’s Rights in Iran (1994), History and Documentation of Human Rights in Iran (2000), and The Rights of Women (2002). Ebadi reflected on her own experiences in Iran Awakening: From Prison to Peace Prize, One Woman’s Struggle at the Crossroads (2006; with Azadeh Moaveni; also published as Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope) and Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran (2016)

(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shirin-Ebadi; https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/law-biographies/shirin-ebadi)