Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian women’s rights advocate serving 12 years in jail, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a decision likely to anger Tehran’s theocratic government.
The award-making committee said the prize was testimony to all those behind recent unprecedented protests in Iran and called for the release of Mohammadi, who has campaigned for both women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty.
“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran, with its undisputed leader, Narges Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Reiss-Andersen.
Mohammadi is currently serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison amounting to about 12 years imprisonment, according to the Front Line Defenders rights organisation, one of the many periods she has been detained behind bars.
Charges include spreading propaganda against the state.
Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the 122-year-old prize and the first one since Maria Ressa of the Philippines won the award in 2021 jointly with Russia’s Dmitry Muratov.
Who’s Narges Mohammadi?
Narges Mohammadi has for years been a prominent human rights figure in Iran.
She was awarded the prize for her fight against the oppression of women in the country, with the head of the Nobel committee calling her a “freedom fighter”.
Despite being in jail almost continuously since 2010, she has managed to publicise abuses even from inside prison.
She is the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organisation led by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Her husband, a political activist, lives in exile with their two children.
Ms Mohammadi, 51, has been arrested 13 times, convicted five times, and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison. She is currently in jail for “spreading propaganda”.
Last year, in a letter from Evin Prison in Tehran she detailed how women detained in the anti-government protests which were then sweeping the country were being sexually and physically abused.
The protests were triggered by the death in custody in September 2022 of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested for allegedly violating strict dress codes.
“This Nobel Prize will embolden Narges’ fight for human rights, but more importantly, this is in fact a prize for the woman, life and freedom (movement),” Mohammadi’s husband Taghi Ramahi told Reuters at his home in Paris.
