Narges Mohammadi has won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her continuous fight for human rights in Iran. The Iranian government denounced the “biased and political” action by the Nobel Committee, stating it was gifted to Mohammadi by “Westerners.”
According to Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895, Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Usually, the past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize include men and women who stood for the civil liberties of the people in their countries.
The Iranian government’s treatment of women has been brutal. Multiple women have been imprisoned or beaten to death for not following the religious and cultural rules of their country.
Every year, four hundred to five hundred women are killed in order to protect a man’s “honor;” most of these men were relatives of the women they had killed. In polls, fifty-three percent of married women in Iran are subjected to some kind of domestic violence in their first years of marriage, but most people don’t know of these barbaric killings and punishments because they have not been shown to the public and were rarely broadcasted on the news.
Many protesters of this widespread brutality have come forward to fight for their and other women’s, much-needed rights. One of these protestors is Narges Mohammadi. Mohammadi has been in and out of prison for over two decades now, fighting for women’s rights in Iran. She has most recently been jailed for being the voice of the voiceless; Mohammadi is currently lodged at the Evin Prison in Tehran and will serve around twelve years there.
Even though Mohammadi was sentenced to years in prison again in 2021, she has still contributed greatly towards the cause that she believes in, whether by rallying protesters for the innocent women killed or challenging the prison in which she has been held.
Mohammadi is currently vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC); which is also headed by a fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi, who was also the first Iranian and Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts towards democracy and women’s, children’s and refugee rights.
As of recently, Mohammadi has been on a hunger strike while in prison. According to Mohammadi’s family, she started this strike in protest of the jail’s refusal to provide her with medical care and treatment. According to her media team, Mohamadi has just ended her hunger strike, after three days of starvation. On Wednesday, November 8, she was finally allowed to leave Tehran’s Evin Prison to visit a hospital for medical care without being forced to wear the mandatory hijab.
It has been almost nine years since Mohammadi has seen her husband and children. Her husband and kids are now located in France, where they can be safe. Mohammadi’s family has promised to hold the Iranian regime “responsible for anything that happens to our beloved Narges.”
