Shirin Ebadi (born 1947) has taken great risks while fighting human rights abuses and advocating for children's rights in Iran. Ebadi was the first female judge in her country. Removed from her post after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, she entered private law practice and advocated for those who had been abused, oppressed, or murdered by Iran's new hard - line Islamist government. She is closely watched by the government, which has imprisoned her for her actions. In recognition of her efforts, Ebadi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.
Ebadi was born in the city of Hamedan in northwestern Iran, one of four children of Mohammad Ali Ebadi and his wife, Mino. Ebadi's father was head of Hamedan's registry office and a lecturer in commercial law. The family moved to Tehran, the country's capital, when Ebadi was one-year-old. There, she attended Firuzkuhi primary school and Anoshiravn Dadgar and Reza Shah Kabir secondary schools."We always encouraged our children to be active in society," Ebadi's mother told Time in 2003. "I always wanted to become just like Shirin became." Ebadi attended Tehran University and continued on to law school, receiving her law degree in three - and - a - half years. Following a six - month apprenticeship, she became her country's first female judge in March 1969. She pursued a doctorate in private law at Tehran University, while maintaining her judgeship, graduating with honors in 1971. In 1975, Ebadi became the president of Bench 24 of the Tehran City Court.
Began Human Rights Work
In 1979 an Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran. Although Iran was a patriarchal country, the Shah's secular monarchy had granted many freedoms to women and down played the influence of religion in the political life of the nation. The new fundamentalist regime, led by Ayatolla Ruholla Khomeini, severely restricted women's rights, and Ebadi and all her fellow female judges were stripped of their positions and reassigned to clerical duties. Ebadi became a clerk in the same court over which she had once presided. Following protests by the demoted women, the female judges were named "experts" in the Justice Department. Still dissatisfied, Ebadi resigned. Her subsequent application for a license to practice law was denied, and she spent the next several years unemployed. During this time, she wrote several influential books and articles focusing on the rights of children and the broader issue of human rights. In 1992, she finally obtained her lawyer's license and set up her own practice in the basement of her home. She also began teaching at Tehran University and established a non-governmental organization, Association for Support of Children's Rights in Iran.
Once she resumed practicing law, Ebadi accepted several high - profile cases centering on human rights abuses, often providing her services at no charge. She defended numerous journalists accused or imprisoned for speaking out against the government and advocating for free expression, and also represented the children of murdered dissidents Dariush and Parveneh Forouhar. In 1994, she was one of 134 signers of the Declaration of Iranian Writers, a petition opposing Iran's fundamentalist government that was regarded as a turning point in the struggle for democracy. In 1999, she represented the family of Ezzat Ebrahiminejad, one of at least three students murdered in a para military attack on a university dormitory following a demonstration protesting restrictions on the press. Ebadi has worked to prove that government - supported forces committed the murders and, as a result of her activities, she was jailed for 25 days in 2000 on charges of defamation. Ebadi spent the time in solitary confinement, although after 18 days she was permitted access to books. "[T]he prison library was available only to men," she explained in an interview with the online Iranian feminist journal Bad Jens. "So they chose some books and brought them to me."
Ebadi also represented the mother of Arin Golshani, a young girl who was tortured to death while in her father's custody. The case was an outgrowth of her efforts to improve the status of children under Iranian law. "The problem with child laws in Iran is that they view children as objects, albeit valuable objects, in relation to their fathers," Ebadi told the UN Chronicle in 2004. For example, she explained, a man may receive the death penalty for murdering a neighbor's child, but only ten years imprisonment for murdering his own. Futhermore, fathers are automatically awarded custody of children in divorce cases. "This is an inappropriate law that forgets about the welfare of children, who do not belong to anyone, and the courts must creatively seek to find the best methods for protecting them," Ebadi said in the UN Chronicle interview.
Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
The government scrutinizes Ebadi, who constantly feels the threat of harm or assassination. In a 2004 interview with The Progressive, she said she had learned to accept such danger: "How can you defy fear? Fear is a human instinct, just like hunger. Whether you like it or not, you become hungry. Similarly with fear. But I have learned to train myself to live with this fear. Every time I am fearful I think to myself, the reason they do this is to discourage me from doing what I do. Hence, if I discontinue my work I will have succumbed to my fears." In 2001, the Norwegian government awarded her the Rafto Prize for her fearless efforts. Two years later, Ebadi's work and the fight for human rights in Iran took the world stage when she received the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, for which she did not even know she was nominated. Ebadi became the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the award, which was largely viewed as an international call for reforms in Iran. "In naming Ebadi last week, Norway's Nobel Committee handed a platform to a formidable Iranian voice of conscience, breathed life into the country's dying reform movement and put the Islamic regime on notice," Scott McLeod wrote in the October 20, 2003, issue of Time. "Your name will shine in the history of the Peace Prize," Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Ole Danbolt Mjøs said in his presentation speech. "Let us hope that the prize will also inspire changes in your beloved home country, Iran, as well as in many other parts of the world where people need to hear your clear voice."
Elated students in Tehran distributed flowers and sweets (the name Shirin means "sweet" in Persian) to passersby. The Iranian government, on the other hand, sought to discredit the honor. "This is not worth the fuss," Iranian president Muhammad Khatami said, according to National Review online. "The Nobel Peace Prize is nothing. Prizes for literature and science matter." The state - sponsored television channel did not even relay the news of the award until the end of its broadcast, following the sports roundup and a report on a downed airplane in New Zealand. The channel refused to carry Ebadi's acceptance speech because she did not wear the hijab, a headscarf that the Iranian government requires all Iranian women to wear, in the awards presentation. Ebadi has long refused to wear the hijab, which was first required by the Lebanese government in the 1970s, outside of Iran. "Instead of telling Muslim women to cover their heads we should tell them to use their heads," she remarked, according to National Review online in 2003. "We must not accept anything that is rejected by our reason."
Drew Attention to Islam
In several interviews, Ebadi said the human rights abuses and the oppression of women by the Iranian government contradict the true teachings of Islam. "It is not Islam at fault, but rather the patriarchal culture that uses its own interpretations to justify whatever it wants," she told The Progressive in 2004. "It utilizes psychology to say that women are emotional. It utilizes medical science to say that men's brains are formed in such a way that they are better able to understand concepts. These are all hypotheses. None of this has been proven. Needless to say, the dominant culture is going to insist on an interpretation of religion that happens to favor men." She also sought to counter the common association outside the Muslim world between Islam and violence. "If certain people exploit their religion and commit murder in the name of Islam, we should not put that on account of Islam, just as we did not attribute to Christianity the horrors that were perpetuated in Bosnia, or just as we do not blame Judaism because of Israel's disregard for UN resolutions," she said in a 2004 interview with the UN Chronicle. "How is it, then, that if some Muslims commit an error, that is interpreted in the name of Islam - that is a mistake and certainly there is no winner in this dark contest."
Ebadi has also been vocal about her belief in her country's autonomy, and has sharply criticized the United States government targeting Iran as needing a democratic government. "The American government includes Iran in the 'axis of evil' and is so busy demanding that Iran embrace democracy that it shouts over the heads of millions of Iranians who demand democracy and freedom - often at great peril," Ebadi told Time in 2003. "Every nation needs to select what's best for itself on its own - whether that's Iran, Iraq or in Europe." Ebadi sued the U.S. government in 2004 for blocking publication of her memoirs in the United States as part of a ban on literature from nations subject to U.S. sanctions.
Ebadi has seen progress over her career. "Iranian women . . . already have some impressive accomplishments to their credit," Michael Theodoulou wrote in the Christian Science Monitor in 1999. "With 14 women in Iran's 270 - seat parliament, they enjoy better representation than their sisters in the U.S. Senate. More Iranian women than men have passed university entrance exams in recent years. They are snapping up jobs that were once exclusively male, such as bus driving." Despite her ability to effect change and the increased visibility of her work, Ebadi, who is married with two daughters in college, told the UN Chronicle she had no interest in seeking a government position. "I have repeatedly stated that I have no intention of taking part in factional disputes, or of direct participation in governmental affairs," she said. "A human rights advocate would be hard pressed to be self - critical if he or she is within the government; that person should remain within the fabric of society. I have always been a judicial counsel, defending the innocent, political prisoners, women and children within my capacity. I shall remain as such in the future, an attorney committed to human rights."
Periodicals
Christian Science Monitor, October 15, 1999.
Progressive, September 2004.
Time, October 20, 2003.
UN Chronicle, March - May, 2004.
Online
"A Short Visit with Shirin Ebadi," Bad Jens,http://www.badjens.com (December 4, 2004).
"Celebrating Shirin Ebadi," National Review Online, October 17, 2003, http://www.nationalreview.com. (November 29, 2004).
"Shirin Ebadi," Biography Resource Center Online, Gale Group, 2003, http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (February 11, 2005).
"Shirin Ebadi - Autobiography," Nobel Prize Website, http://www.nobelprize.org (November 29, 2004).
"The Nobel Peace Prize 2003," (presentation speech) Nobel Prize Web site, http://nobelprize.org (November 29, 2004).
