Nobel Winner Says Feminist Movements, Not Military Force, Holds Key to Democracy in Iran
    By Erin Gartner
    The Associated Press

    Sunday 17 September 2006

    Raleigh, North Carolina - Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said supporting feminist movements in the Islamic world would better promote democracy than military force.

    "Instead of bringing democracy with cluster bombs, we should support women fighting for democracy," Shirin Ebadi said through an interpreter Thursday during a speech at Meredith College, a women's university in Raleigh.

    A lawyer, former judge and writer in Iran, Ebadi spoke in Farsi to about 1,000 people about fighting for human rights in Iran and elsewhere in the world.

    She said the feminist movement has been successful in changing some custody laws in Iran, but that women need more victories. Iranian women hold high-ranking social and political positions yet the court testimony of one man is equal to testimony given by two women, she said.

    "Although they (feminists) were always told these laws were the laws of Islam and could not change, they have been able to change laws," she said.

    Ebadi heads the Center for Protecting Human Rights, a group formed by six prominent lawyers that was banned by Iran's hard-line government last month. The government said the group did not have a proper permit.

    Ebadi became one of Iran's first female judges after graduating with a law degree from the University of Tehran in 1969. Ten years later, during the Islamic Revolution, she said she was demoted to an administrative secretary when the country's conservative leaders insisted that Islam forbade judgment by women.

    In 2003, she became the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said she was chosen "for her efforts for democracy and human rights ... especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children."

    Her autobiography, "Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope," was published this year in the US.