Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2003 Shirin Ebadi is a well-known lawyer and human rights activist.
Born in 1947, she earned a law degree from the University of Tehran. Between 1975-79, she served as president of the city court of Tehran, one the first female judges in Iran.
She was forced to resign after the revolution in 1979. At present, besides her work as a lawyer, she also teaches at the University of Tehran.
She has displayed great personal courage as a lawyer defending individuals and groups who have fallen victim to a powerful political and legal system that is legitimised through an inhumane interpretation of Islam.
She has shown willingness and ability to cooperate with representatives of secular as well as religious views. She campaigns for peaceful solutions to social problems and promotes new thinking on Islamic terms.
Ebadi argues for a new interpretation of Islamic law, which is in harmony with vital human rights such as democracy, equality before the law, freedom of speech and religious freedom, including for the Bahai community, which has had problems in Iran ever since its foundation.
She is known for promoting peaceful and democratic solutions to serious problems in society. She takes an active part in public debates and is well-known and admired by her compatriots for her defence in court of victims of the conservative faction's attack on freedom of speech and political freedom.
As a lawyer, she has been involved in a number of controversial political cases, including the one in which she worked actively - and successfully - to reveal the principals behind the attack on students at Tehran University in 1999 when several students died. As a result, Ebadi has been imprisoned on numerous occasions.
Associated with the fight for the rights of women and children, Ebadi is the founder and leader of the Association for Support of Children's Rights in Iran. She has written a number of academic books and articles focused on human rights.
Among her books translated into English are The Rights of the Child. A Study of Legal Aspects of Children's Rights in Iran (Tehran, 1994), published with support from UNICEF, and History and Documentation of Human Rights in Iran (New York, 2000).
Source: The Norwegian Nobel Committee
