# Shirin Ebadi Shirin Ebadi (born 1947) is an Iranian human-rights lawyer and the first Muslim woman — and first Iranian — to win the [[Nobel Peace Prize]], awarded in 2003 for her decades defending the rights of women, children, and political dissidents. ## From Judge to Defendant's Advocate Ebadi was one of Iran's first female judges before the [[Iranian Revolution]]; like other women on the bench, she was demoted to a clerical role after 1979, when the new regime ruled women unfit to judge. She turned instead to legal advocacy, becoming the country's most prominent defender of dissidents, persecuted intellectuals, abused children, and the families of those murdered by the state. She co-founded the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Tehran, documenting abuses the regime sought to bury. ## The Nobel and Its Cost The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize gave Ebadi global standing and a measure of protection — but also made her a target. The regime harassed her, raided her office, froze the Human Rights Center, and at one point seized her Nobel medal (drawing international condemnation). After the regime's crackdown on the 2009 [[Iranian Green Movement]], Ebadi — abroad at the time — was effectively forced into exile, from which she has continued to campaign. ## Why It Matters For the vault, Ebadi is a foundational figure of the [[International Democratic Opposition Hub]] to the Islamic Republic — proof that the most credible Iranian opposition is grounded in human rights and the rule of law, not in externally sponsored exile factions like the [[Mujahedin-e Khalq]]. Her career also models a lineage of women-led resistance that runs forward to [[Narges Mohammadi]] and the [[Woman Life Freedom]] movement, and her insistence on reform from within Iranian and Islamic frameworks complicates any simplistic clash-of-civilizations reading of the country. *See also: [[Iranian History Hub]], [[Narges Mohammadi]], [[International Democratic Opposition Hub]], [[Woman Life Freedom]]*