• Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize on October 6.

• She has been awarded for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.  

• This year’s Peace Prize also recognises the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women. 

Who is Narges Mohammadi?

• Narges Mohammadi is one of Iran’s leading human rights activists, who has campaigned for women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty.

• Born in 1972 in Zanjan, in the northwest of Iran, Mohammadi studied physics before becoming an engineer. But she then launched a new career in journalism, working for newspapers that were at the time part of the reformist movement.

• In the 2000s, she joined the Center for Human Rights Defenders, founded by the Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2003, fighting in particular for the abolition of the death penalty.

• In 2011 Mohammadi was arrested for the first time and sentenced to many years of imprisonment for her efforts to assist incarcerated activists and their families.

• Two years later, after her release on bail, Mohammadi immersed herself in a campaign against use of the death penalty. Iran has long been among the countries that execute the highest proportion of their inhabitants annually. Since January 2022, more than 860 prisoners have been punished by death in Iran.

• Her activism against the death penalty led to the re-arrest of Mohammadi in 2015, and to a sentence of additional years behind walls. 

• Upon her return to prison, she began opposing the regime’s systematic use of torture and sexualised violence against political prisoners, especially women, that is practised in Iranian prisons.

• Her brave struggle for freedom of expression and the right of independence has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime in Iran has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

• She is currently serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison amounting to about 12 years imprisonment, according to the Front Line Defenders rights organisation.

Nobel Prize

• Alfred Nobel, an inventor, entrepreneur, scientist and businessman, lay the foundation for the prize in 1895 when he wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the prize.

• The Nobel Foundation is tasked with a mission to manage Alfred Nobel’s fortune and has ultimate responsibility for fulfilling the intentions of Nobel's will.

• The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901 and they have been awarded annually since then. There have been years in that time when the Nobel Prizes have not been awarded - mostly during World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). 

• The Nobel Prize categories are physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. These were laid out in the will of Alfred Nobel. 

• In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank)  established  the  Sveriges Riksbank  Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. 

• When Alfred Nobel died leaving the majority of his fortune to the establishment of the Nobel Prize he stated that the money should be converted into a fund and invested in safe securities. Today the interest earned on that money is used to fund the Nobel Prizes. 

• Winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes will get a financial reward of 11 million Swedish crowns ($986,000). The prize money has been adjusted up and down in recent years.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store