Narges Mohammadi

Biography

Narges Mohammadi, born on April 21, 1972, in Zanjan, Iran, is an Iranian human rights activist, journalist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. She studied at Imam Khomeini International University and started her career in journalism before moving into human rights work. In 2003, she joined the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), led by fellow Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, and became the vice president. Her efforts at the DHRC were mainly focused on defending civil liberties and human rights in Iran, especially women's rights and opposition to the death penalty.

Mohammadi's activism has come at a high personal cost. Since 2016, she's faced repeated imprisonment for her work, spending long periods in Iranian prisons. In May 2016, she was sentenced to 16 years in prison for allegedly leading an illegal organization called Legam. Although she was released in 2020, she was sent back to prison in 2021, where she continued detailing the abuse and solitary confinement of women prisoners. Her most recent arrest was in December 2025, leading to a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence in February 2026.

Despite being imprisoned, Mohammadi has remained a strong voice for women's rights, speaking out against Iran's mandatory hijab laws. She has encouraged mass feminist civil disobedience against forced veiling and criticized the government's hijab and chastity program introduced in 2023. Even behind bars, she has reported on prison conditions and how female prisoners are treated, continuing her work as an activist and journalist.

Her commitment to human rights has earned her several international awards. In October 2023, while still in prison, she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her work to promote human rights and freedom for all. Other awards include the Per Anger Prize (2011), the International Alexander Langer Award (2009), the Weimar Human Rights Prize (2016), the Andrei Sakharov Prize (2018), the Olof Palme Prize (2023), and the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize (2023). She was also listed in BBC's 100 Women in 2022. In her personal life, she is married to Taghi Rahmani and has faced serious health issues recently, including cancer treatment that required bone surgery and a suspected heart attack in 2026.