Jailed Iranian women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi has won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2023.

The 51-year-old campaigner was given the award “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”.

The award also recognised the hundreds of thousands of people who have demonstrated against Iranian discrimination and oppression of women.

Who is Narges Mohammadi?

Ms Mohammadi is one of the country’s leading human rights activists, and has also campaigned against the death penalty.

Ms Mohammadi was jailed for 16 years by an Iranian court in 2016 for “establishing and running the illegal splinter group” Legam – which opposed the death penalty.

Her imprisonment prompted condemnation from the international community at the time.

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She was previously jailed for 11 years in 2011 for “acting against the national security” for her work with the Iranian human rights group, Defenders of Human Rights Center.

Ms Mohammadi was reported to have gone on hunger strike with British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe while serving her 2016 sentence at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

She was released in October 2020, but was arrested in November last year after she attended a memorial for a victim of violent 2019 protests.

‘Great personal cost’

Her struggle has come “at great personal cost”, the Nobel committee said.

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“She fights for women against systematic discrimination and oppression,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, who announced the prize in Oslo on Friday.

“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran with its undisputed leader, Nargis Mohammadi,” she added.

“The impact of the prize is not for the Nobel committee to decide upon. We hope that it is an encouragement to continue the work in whichever form this movement finds to be fitting.”

Previous winners of the award include South Africa’s anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, former US president Barack Obama, and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai.

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