Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights activist, won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The former vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC) was selected from a list of just over 350 nominations by a panel of experts in Norway.
Mohammadi, 51, has done her work despite facing numerous arrests and spending years behind bars for her activism.
“This prize is, first and foremost, a recognition of the very important work of an entire movement in Iran with its undisputed leader Narges Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, who announced the prize in Oslo. “The Nobel Committee does not decide on the impact of the prize. We hope that it will be an encouragement to continue the work in the form that this movement deems appropriate.”
Iranian human rights activist and Vice President of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), Narges Mohammadi, poses in an undated handout photo. Mohammadi family archive photos/Handout via Portal
Mohammadi’s most recent detention began when she was arrested in 2021 after attending a memorial service for a person killed during nationwide protests in 2019 sparked by a rise in gasoline prices. She was held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, whose inmates include people with Western connections and political prisoners.
Reiss-Andersen said Mohammadi has been imprisoned 13 times and convicted five times. In total she was sentenced to 31 years in prison. She is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman, after her colleague, human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, won the prize in 2003.
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Mohammadi was behind bars amid recent protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. This triggered one of the greatest challenges to the Iranian theocracy ever. Heavy security measures resulted in more than 500 deaths and over 22,000 others were arrested.
Behind bars, Mohammadi penned an opinion piece for the New York Times and wrote: “What the government may not understand is that the more of us locked up, the stronger we become.”
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The DHRC’s Tehran office was raided and the group was expelled by Iranian authorities in 2008.
In 2019, Mohammadi and fellow prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen, announced plans to go on hunger strike in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison to protest the denial of medical treatment. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released by Iran in 2022 after the British government paid off decades-old debts to Tehran, but Mohammadi remains in Evin.
Last year, human rights activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia won the prize in what was seen as a sharp rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart and ally.
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to three human rights activists
The prize can be awarded to individuals or organizations. Other previous honorees include Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations.
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed that the Peace Prize should be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee.
The independent body is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament.
This year, the committee received 351 nominations – 259 from individuals and 92 from organizations. Those eligible to make nominations include former Nobel Peace Prize winners, committee members, heads of state, parliamentarians, and professors of political science, history, and international law.
The Peace Prize is the fifth of this year’s prizes to be offered. A day earlier, the Nobel Committee awarded the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse the Prize for Literature. On Wednesday the chemistry prize went to the US scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov.
The physics prize on Tuesday went to the French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, the French scientist Pierre Agostini and the Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz. The Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and the American Drew Weissman received the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday.
The Nobel Prize season ends on Monday with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
The awards will be presented at awards ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm in December. They carry a cash prize of 11 million Swedish kroner (approximately $1 million). Winners will also receive an 18-karat gold medal and diploma when they accept their Nobel Prizes at the awards ceremonies in December.
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