Shiran Ebadi, a prominent Iranian lawyer and human rights activist, will be speaking in Cabot Auditorium at 6:45 p.m. tomorrow.
Ebadi, who currently lectures at Tehran University in Iran, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts to advocate peaceful and democratic strategies to bring basic human rights to those on the margins of Iranian society, especially women and children. She was also the first female judge in Iran's history.
Practicing law from her private office since 1992, she has handled a number of human rights and social cases. She has represented several journalists accused or sentenced in cases related to freedom of expression, families of serial murder victims, the family of a murdered university student, and the mother of a child found tortured to death at the home of her stepmother.
Ebadi has also published a number of books and articles about the rights of women, children, and refugees. She has also written on medical, copyright, and architectural law.
Ebadi first served as a judge in March of 1969.
Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, which brought in a conservative government that rebelled against the wealth of private industrialists, banned western ideas, and increased discrimination against women, she was demoted from her post as judge to the position of a clerk.
She remained housebound until earning her law license in 1992. In 2000 she was jailed for three weeks after being convicted in a closed trial of slandering government officials.
Ebadi also co-founded the Association for Support of Children's Rights in 1995 and the Human Rights Defense Centre in 2001. She has led many research projects for the UNICEF office in Tehran.
Since receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, she has received honorary doctorates from a number of universities internationally.
She was also recognized as an official Human Rights Watch observer in 1996 and received the Rafto Human Rights Foundation prize for human rights activities in 2001.
