“Woman—Life—Freedom.” This motto, chanted by Iranian protesters in 2022 after a young woman died in police custody, is emblematic of Narges Mohammadi’s life’s work. Born in Iran in 1972, Mohammadi has been a vocal figure in Iranian politics since the 1990s, advocating for civil disobedience in order to fight against the country’s oppressive and often violent policies.
Since 2009, she’s been imprisoned multiple times for her activism in the notorious Evin Prison and has endured extreme conditions and brutality as a result. But despite her government’s attempts to silence and defame her, Mohammadi has continued to advocate for human rights from behind bars, specifically the abolition of Iran’s hijab and chastity laws and the abolition of the death penalty. During Iran’s 2022 protests, some of the largest demonstrations in the country’s history, Mohammadi, though imprisoned, managed to smuggle reports to the BBC and the New York Times detailing the sexual, physical, and psychological abuse faced by Iran’s female prisoners.
In October of 2023, while still in prison, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work against the oppression of women in Iran and what the committee called her “courageous fight for human rights, freedom and democracy.”
