The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her struggle to promote human rights and freedom for all”. Mohammadi is today one of the most famous activists for women’s rights and human rights in Iran and supported, among other things, the protests that began last year after the death of Mahsa Ami.
In 2009, the Alexander Langer Foundation awarded her the International Alexander Langer Prize, recognizing her commitment to the defense of human rights and freedom of expression. Narges, in fact, was a close collaborator of Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2003, holding the position of spokesperson and vice-president of the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, which provides legal assistance to hundreds of dissidents. On 7 September 2008 Narges Mohammadi also became president of the executive committee of the National Peace Council in Iran, a vast coalition that aims to avoid the danger of an internal military conflict and opposes any military and violent logic. Born in 1972 in Zanjan, a city about 300 kilometers north-west of Tehran, the Iranian capital, she graduated in Physics, but since her university years she has been involved in clandestine movements for women’s rights and has concentrated above all on the defense of the rights of prisoners and political prisoners, and on campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty.
Narges today is not a free woman. She is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison accused of spreading propaganda against the regime, for which she was arrested 13 times and sentenced five times for a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. Narges not only paid for her commitment with the loss of freedom and torture, but also with her separation from her husband Taghi Rahmani, now in exile in France, whom the activist has not seen in person for many years.
