OSLO: Imprisoned activist Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for fighting the oppression of women in Iran.
“This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran with with its undisputed leader, Nargis Mohammadi,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo. “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.”
Authorities arrested Mohammadi in November after she attended a memorial for a victim of violent 2019 protests. Reiss-Andersen said Mohammadi has been imprisoned 13 times and convicted five times. In total, she has been sentenced to 31 years in prison.
She is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the award in 2003.
Mohammadi was behind bars for the recent nationwide protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after she she was detained by the country’s morality police. That sparked one of the most-intense challenges ever to Iran’s theocracy since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. More than 500 people were killed in a heavy security crackdown while over 22,000 others were arrested.
However, Mohammadi contributed an opinion piece for The New York Times from behind bars.
“What the government may not understand is that the more of us they lock up, the stronger we become,” she wrote.
There was no immediate reaction from Iranian state television and other state-controlled media. Some semiofficial news agencies acknowledged Mohammadi’s win in online messages, citing foreign press reports.
Before being jailed, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. She has been close to Ebadi, who founded the center.
In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize.
The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December.
The winner of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize is chosen by a panel of experts in Norway from a list of just over 350 nominations.
Last year’s prize was won by human rights activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, in what was seen as a strong rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart and ally.
Other previous winners include Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations.
Unlike the other Nobel prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed that the peace prize be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee. The independent panel is appointed by the Norwegian parliament.
The peace prize is the fifth of this year’s prizes to be announced. A day earlier, the Nobel committee awarded Norwegian writer Jon Fosse the prize for literature. On Wednesday, the chemistry prize went to US scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov.
The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz. Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday.
Nobels season ends next week with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Narges Mohammadi wins the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting the oppression of women in Iran
https://arab.news/cdxwc
Narges Mohammadi wins the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting the oppression of women in Iran
- Authorities arrested Mohammadi in November after she attended a memorial for a victim of violent 2019 protests
- Mohammadi contributed an opinion piece for The New York Times from behind bars
UN Security Council members blast Israel’s West Bank plans on eve of Trump’s Board of Peace meeting
- Pakistan denounced Israel’s contentious West Bank settlement project during the meeting as a “clear violation of international law”
- Pakistan is the only country on the 15-member council that also accepted an invitation to join US President Trump's Board of Peace
UNITED NATIONS: Members of the United Nations Security Council called Wednesday for the Gaza ceasefire deal to become permanent and blasted Israeli efforts to expand control in the West Bank as a threat to prospects of a two-state solution, coming on the eve of President Donald Trump’s first Board of Peace gathering to discuss the future of the Palestinian territories.
The high-level UN session in New York was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved up after Trump announced the board’s meeting for the same day and it became clear that it would complicate travel plans for diplomats planning to attend both. It is a sign of the potential for overlapping and conflicting agendas between the United Nations’ most powerful body and Trump’s new initiative, whose broader ambitions to broker global conflicts have raised concerns in some countries that it may attempt to rival the UN Security Council.
Pakistan, the only country on the 15-member council that also accepted an invitation to join the Board of Peace, denounced Israel’s contentious West Bank settlement project during the meeting as “null and void” and said it constitutes a “clear violation of international law.”
“Israel’s recent illegal decisions to expand its control over the West Bank are gravely disturbing,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said.
The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Indonesia also attended the Security Council’s monthly Mideast meeting after many Arab and Islamic countries requested last week that it discuss Gaza and the West Bank before some of them head to Washington.
“Annexation is a breach of the UN Charter and of the most fundamental rules of international law,” Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said. “It is a breach of President Trump’s plan, and constitutes an existential threat to ongoing peace efforts.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said that attention was not on the UN session and that the focus of the international world would be on the Board of Peace meeting.
Saar also accused the council of being “infected with an anti-Israeli obsession” and insisted that no nation has a stronger right than its “historical and documented right to the land of the Bible.”
Bigger ambitions for the Board of Peace
The board to be chaired by Trump was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing his 20-point plan for Gaza’s future. But the Republican president’s new vision for the board to be a mediator of worldwide conflicts has led to skepticism from major allies.
While more than 20 countries have so far accepted an invitation to join the board, close US partners, including France, Germany and others, have opted not to join yet and renewed support for the UN, which also is in the throes of major reforms and funding cuts.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said there is an opportunity for the UN’s most powerful body to help build “a better future” for Israelis and Palestinians despite the “cycle of violence and suffering” over the more than two-year war between Israel and Hamas.
“Gaza must not get stuck in a no man’s land between peace and war,” Cooper said as she opened the meeting.
Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, appeared to criticize countries that had not yet signed on to the Board of Peace, saying that unlike the Security Council, the board is “not talking, it is doing.”
“We are hearing the chattering class criticizing the structure of the board, that it’s unconventional, that it’s unprecedented,” Waltz said Wednesday. “Again, the old ways were not working.”
The Security Council is meeting a day after nearly all of its 15 members — minus the United States — and dozens of other diplomats joined Palestinian ambassador Mansour as he read a statement on behalf of 80 countries and several organizations condemning Israel’s latest actions in the West Bank, demanding an immediate reversal and underlining “strong opposition to any form of annexation.”
In the last several weeks, Israel has launched a contentious land regulation process that will deepen its control in the occupied West Bank. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said it amounts to “de facto sovereignty” that will block the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Outraged Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves an illegal annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.
‘A pivotal moment in the Middle East’
The UN meeting also delved into the US-brokered ceasefire deal that took effect Oct. 10. UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo and Israeli and Palestinian civil society representatives gave briefings for the first time since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that launched the war.
Hiba Qasas, a Palestinian who is founding executive director of Geneva-based Principles for Peace Foundation, and Nadav Tamir, a former Israeli diplomat who is executive director of J Street Israel, both said they represent a strong coalition of Israelis and Palestinians who believe the only way to end the conflict is through a two-state solution.
“Israel cannot remain the democratic homeland of the Jewish people if Palestinians are denied a homeland of their own. Our futures are interdependent,” Tamir said.
DiCarlo of the UN said this is “a pivotal moment in the Middle East” that opens the possibility for the region to move in a new direction. “But that opening is neither assured nor indefinite,” she said, and whether it will be sustained depends on decisions in the coming weeks.
“The Board of Peace meeting in Washington, D.C., tomorrow is an important step,” she said.
Aspects of the ceasefire deal have moved forward, including Hamas releasing all the hostages it was holding and increased amounts of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza, though the UN says the level is insufficient. A new technocratic committee has been appointed to administer Gaza’s daily affairs.
But the most challenging steps lie ahead, including the deployment of an international security force, disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza.
Trump said this week that the Board of Peace members have pledged $5 billion toward Gaza reconstruction and will commit thousands of personnel to international stabilization and police forces for the territory. He didn’t provide details. Indonesia’s military says up to 8,000 of its troops are expected to be ready by the end of June for a potential deployment to Gaza as part of a humanitarian and peace mission.
