# 2023 Nobel Prize in Peace: The prize that reached into a prison cell > The 2023 Peace Prize went to Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian human rights activist who has spent decades fighting the oppression of women in Iran. She was locked in a Tehran prison cell when the prize was announced, and her teenage children read her acceptance speech in Oslo on her behalf. - Laureates: Narges Mohammadi (share 1, Defenders of Human Rights Center, Tehran) - Official citation: “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all” - Course page: https://nobelexplained.com/peace/2023-woman-life-freedom - Last updated: 2026-06-21 ## Explained simply (ELI5) The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to one person: **Narges Mohammadi**, a human rights activist from **Iran**. She won it for her long fight against the unfair treatment of women in Iran, and for defending the rights and freedom of everyone. Mohammadi has spent most of her adult life standing up to the Iranian government, even though it keeps putting her in prison for doing so. When the prize was announced, she was locked in a cell in Tehran. She could not travel to Norway to collect it, so her two teenage children read her speech aloud at the ceremony instead. > **Honoured behind bars** The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose Mohammadi while she sat in Evin Prison. By doing so it was not only praising one brave woman; it was also pointing to the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who had marched for women's rights under the slogan 'Woman, Life, Freedom'. ## Explained for undergraduates In Iran, women live under laws that treat them as unequal, including a compulsory dress code enforced by patrols known as the morality police. **Narges Mohammadi** has spent more than two decades challenging that system, and the wider crackdown on anyone who dissents, and she has paid for it with her freedom. - **1990s**: As a physics student, Mohammadi begins campaigning for equality and women's rights. She later works as an engineer and writes for reform-minded newspapers. - **2003**: She joins the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Tehran, founded by Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, and rises to become its deputy head. - **2011**: Arrested for the first time and sentenced to years in prison for helping jailed activists and their families. - **2015**: Re-arrested after leading a campaign against Iran's heavy use of the death penalty, adding more years to her sentence. - **2022**: Publishes 'White Torture', a book of interviews exposing the use of solitary confinement against women prisoners. - **Oct 2023**: Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while still held in Evin Prison. Her prize came a year after the death in custody of **Mahsa Amini**, a young woman detained for wearing her hijab 'improperly'. Amini's death set off nationwide protests under the slogan 'Woman, Life, Freedom', and the Committee said the award also honoured the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets. > **A campaign that never stopped** What sets Mohammadi apart is persistence under punishment. Each time she was released she returned to the same work: defending political prisoners, opposing executions, and exposing torture. The Committee framed her decades of activism, much of it carried on from inside prison, as a fight not only for Iranian women but for human rights and freedom for all. ## Explained for experts The 2023 prize was widely read as a direct response to the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' uprising. Those protests had erupted in September 2022 after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran's morality police, and they grew into one of the most serious challenges to the Islamic Republic in years. By honouring Mohammadi, who had championed these same causes long before the protests began, the Committee tied one woman's record to a mass movement and to Iran's wider treatment of women and use of capital punishment. > **Thirteen arrests, thirty-one years** Mohammadi's struggle has carried an extraordinary price. The Iranian authorities have arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a combined 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. She was still being held in Evin Prison when the Committee named her, and she remained there as the citation was read aloud in Oslo. **Context, impact, and debate** - Death penalty: after an early release, Mohammadi led a campaign against executions in a country that puts more of its people to death, by share of population, than almost any other. More than 860 prisoners were executed in Iran in the period the Committee cited. - 'White torture': from inside prison she documented prolonged solitary confinement and sexualised violence against women prisoners, work gathered in her 2022 book of interviews. - An organisation, not just an individual: the prize again spotlighted the Defenders of Human Rights Center, making Mohammadi the second figure from it, after Shirin Ebadi in 2003, to win the Peace Prize. - Recognition for a movement: the Committee stated that the award also honoured the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who protested under 'Woman, Life, Freedom'. - A recurring choice: as with several recent Peace Prizes, the Committee honoured someone the criticised state was actively imprisoning. Mohammadi has refused to soften her stance from inside her cell. She has continued to issue statements and smuggle out writing, insisting that the movement for women's rights and human dignity would outlast any single activist. The award was not universally welcomed. Iran's government condemned it as a political and interventionist act, while leaders in the West, including US President Joe Biden, praised the choice. That split captured how contested the prize was: inside Iran the state cast it as foreign meddling, while for the protest movement it was rare international recognition. The Committee placed Mohammadi in a long line of laureates honoured while imprisoned by the very governments they challenged, a choice that tests whether global attention can shield an activist or simply provoke harsher treatment. > “Only by embracing equal rights for all can the world achieve the fraternity between nations that Alfred Nobel sought to promote.” > (Norwegian Nobel Committee, 2023 announcement) ## Think first **Q:** Mohammadi was locked in a cell, unable to speak freely or travel. What does the Nobel Committee gain by giving its Peace Prize to someone the Iranian state is actively imprisoning? **A:** **Attention is a form of protection, and a form of pressure.** A government can jail an unknown activist quietly, but a Nobel laureate is watched by the world. By honouring Mohammadi while she sat in Evin Prison, the Committee made her treatment an international issue and amplified the cause she stands for. It was explicit that the award also honoured the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who had protested for women's rights under the slogan 'Woman, Life, Freedom'. ## Her children read the speech she could not give When Narges Mohammadi won the prize she was locked in Evin Prison and could not travel to Oslo. The text of her Nobel lecture was smuggled out of prison, and at the December ceremony it was read aloud on her behalf by her teenage children, Ali and Kiana Rahmani. ## Key terms - **Woman, Life, Freedom (Zan, Zendegi, Azadi)**: The rallying slogan of the protest movement that swept Iran in 2022, calling for women's rights and an end to compulsory rules on how women dress and live. - **Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC)**: A Tehran-based human rights organisation founded in 2001 by lawyers including Shirin Ebadi. Mohammadi joined in 2003 and became its deputy head. - **Morality police**: Iranian patrols that enforce the country's strict dress code, including the compulsory hijab for women. Mahsa Amini was detained by such a patrol shortly before her death in 2022. - **Evin Prison**: A Tehran prison long used to hold political prisoners and activists in Iran. Mohammadi was held there when she won the Nobel Peace Prize. - **White torture**: Mohammadi's term for prolonged solitary confinement and sensory isolation, the subject of her 2022 book of interviews with women prisoners. ## Check yourself 1. Why was Narges Mohammadi unable to collect her 2023 Nobel Peace Prize in person? - She refused the award - **She was imprisoned in Iran** (correct) - She was too ill to travel - She had emigrated abroad - Why: Mohammadi was being held in Evin Prison in Tehran when the prize was announced and awarded. Her acceptance speech was smuggled out of prison and read in Oslo by her children. 2. What did the Nobel Committee honour Mohammadi for? - Brokering a ceasefire - **Her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and for human rights and freedom for all** (correct) - A scientific discovery - Negotiating an international treaty - Why: The Committee honoured her decades-long fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her broader struggle for human rights and freedom for all, not any single agreement or discovery. 3. The slogan 'Woman, Life, Freedom' is tied to the prize. Where did it come from? - A government campaign - **The protests that followed Mahsa Amini's death in custody** (correct) - A United Nations programme - Mohammadi's election platform - Why: The slogan ('Zan, Zendegi, Azadi') became the cry of the nationwide protests sparked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran's morality police, the movement the Committee said the prize also honoured. ## The laureates ### Narges Mohammadi Born in Iran in 1972, Mohammadi trained as a physicist and worked as an engineer and a newspaper columnist before devoting herself to activism. In 2003 she joined the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Tehran, the organisation founded by fellow Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, and rose to become its deputy head. By the time she won the prize, the Iranian authorities had arrested her 13 times and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes. ## Sources - [The Nobel Peace Prize 2023, press release (NobelPrize.org)](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2023/press-release/) - [Narges Mohammadi (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narges_Mohammadi) - [Mahsa Amini protests (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests) --- From Nobel Explained (https://nobelexplained.com), a free, independent course on every Nobel Prize since 2020. Not affiliated with the Nobel Foundation. Facts are pinned from the official Nobel Prize API.