PARIS-The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced in Oslo on Friday.
Iranian campaigner Narges Mohammadi has for decades campaigned on the most sensitive issues in the Islamic republic, opposing pillars of the clerical system including capital punishment and the obligatory hijab, and defiantly refusing to give up her campaigning even behind bars. She has not seen her children for eight years, has spent most of her recent life in prison and acknowledges there is no immediate prospect of release.
Yet still she insists her struggle is worthwhile, saying the protest movement that erupted one year ago in Iran against the Islamic republic is still alive.
First arrested 22 years ago, Mohammadi, 51, has spent much of the past two decades in and out of jail over her unstinting campaigning for human rights in Iran. She has most recently been incarcerated since November 2021.
The activist “is the most determined person I know”, her husband Taghi Rahmani, who has been a refugee in France since 2012 with their two children, twins now aged 17, told AFP. “She has three causes in her life -- respect for human rights, her feminist commitment and justice for all the crimes that have been committed,” said Rahmani.