Credit: Heba Amin

Known For: First Muslim woman and Iranian to Receive the Nobel Peace Prize
Dates: Hijri 1366 – Present (AH)
Common Era 1947 – Present (CE)
Country: Iran

About

The first Iranian to accept a Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has spent her career pursuing social justice as a judge, lawyer, and author.  She studied at the Faculty of Law at the University in Tehran, obtaining her law degree in three and a half years.  Soon after passing her entrance exam with the Department of Justice she began her career as a judge at the age of 23, the first female judge in the Iranian justice system.  While serving as a judge, she continued her studies and received her doctorate in private law in 1971. However, soon after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, she was removed from her post and given clerical work in the same courtroom over which she had hitherto presided. Frustrated with this situation, she submitted an early retirement request, which was accepted.

During her time at home, she published multiple books and articles.  In 1992, she received her lawyer’s license to practice and began a private legal practice.  Since then, she has acted as legal counsel in many social justice cases.  She has defended women, children, political dissidents, refugees, and those whose fundamental human rights have been violated.  She founded the Center for the Defense of Human Rights in 2001 and the Association for the Support of Children’s Rights in 1995. 

She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her work upholding human rights, especially for the rights of women and children, supporting non-violence, and seeing no conflict between Islam and fundamental human rights.  Since 2003, she has lectured widely and is currently a professor at the University of Tehran.