Feature

Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Challenges Chicago Students to Promote Democracy, Human Rights

By Elizabeth Vivirito, MPP'10

Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi spoke at the University of Chicago on Wednesday, October 15, about promoting human rights via democracy throughout the world. She inspired the audience with her determination and challenged them to join the cause. The event was a part of the Harris School's Aon Global Leadership program and the International House Global Voices series.

Speaking through a translator, Ebadi pointed to democracy as "the one and only human rights law" in the world. She pointed to certain countries in violation of that law, including China and Cuba for their restriction of opinion and the United States for its violation of civil rights under the guise of national security.

Ebadi-a smallish Iranian woman with an effective voice and a powerful message-was the first Muslim woman to receive the Peace Prize in 2003. She continues advocating for human rights and discussed the situation in her home country of Iran. "The first step for democracy is the freedom of speech," a freedom which Iran severely restricts. Soon-to-be published books first need approval by the state, and often authors, publishers, and translators are persecuted. Journalists are imprisoned for disagreeing with the government, and constitutional lawyers are not allowed to criticize the Iranian constitution.

Ebadi had been a highly regarded lawyer in her own country and in 1975 became the first woman to preside over a legislative court. But her status did not exempt her from the discrimination women faced after the 1979 Iranian revolution. After conservative clerics came to power, she was demoted to a secretarial position.

Addressing women's rights, she argued, "Democracy and the rights of women are directly related, they are two sides of one scale. When one suffers, so too does the other." In Iran, women are not guaranteed the same rights as men, as the penal code codifies their value as worth half that of a man's.

But, Ebadi believes women have been creative in overcoming these challenges and the feminist movement in Iran is strong. Through her work and the work of others, the courts are slowly changing some of the country's discriminatory laws.

"Democracy is not a gift that you can give to someone; it is a historical process that needs maturation." Ebadi noted that the Rumsfield-Bush discourse of "spreading democracy" in the Middle East only came about after the invasion of-and failure to find WMDs in-Iraq.

Ebadi closed her discussion with a challenge for Chicago students to make themselves aware of the world around them. "I believe that the United States is a superpower today. The world, therefore, cannot become a better place unless U.S. foreign policy changes. This will not change unless its young people know what is going on beyond its borders."