Vaclav Havel prize awarded to Iran lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh
Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh is certainly one of Iran’s best-known human rights activists. On September 28, she was awarded the Council of Europe’s Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize.
In 2026, Sotoudeh was certainly one of three finalists for prize. The different nominees had been the Iranian-American journalist and girls’s rights activist Masih Alinejad and the Hungarian human rights lawyer Marta Pardavi.
The Council of Europe is honoring Sotoudeh’s longstanding dedication to human rights and her work, which she has carried out at appreciable private danger.
The council stated Sotoudeh campaigned in opposition to obligatory hijab legal guidelines and the dying penalty, “regardless of repeated arrests, prolonged imprisonment and nice private danger.”
Who is Nasrin Sotoudeh?
Human rights lawyer Sotoudeh is dedicated to ladies’s rights, the rights of political prisoners, and the abolition of the dying penalty. She has represented quite a few activists, journalists, members of non secular minorities, and people sentenced to death.
“In moments like this, we keep in mind previous struggles, we recall our shared beliefs and we consider the people throughout the globe who stand with us,” Sotoudeh in a video assertion from Tehran.
As early as 2012, she was awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, together with movie director Jafar Panahi. At the time, she was in jail and was unable to just accept the award in particular person.
In 2019, she had been sentenced to 33 years in jail and 148 lashes. One motive for the sentence was her work as a lawyer for girls who had protested in opposition to Iran’s headband mandate.
Even whereas in jail, she continued her advocacy for human rights. In 2020, Sotoudeh went on a starvation strike at Evin Prison to protest the circumstances of detention and the state of affairs of political prisoners. That identical 12 months, she was among the many recipients of the Alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award) and discovered of the award whereas in jail.
Voice for girls’s rights in Iran
During Iran’s nationwide “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement in 2022, Sotoudeh as soon as once more grew to become a number one voice for the rights of Iranian ladies.
Her decades-long dedication symbolizes the enduring resistance in opposition to state restrictions and repression. She has been arrested repeatedly and sentenced to lengthy jail phrases, together with in April 2026. In May, she was launched on bail.
The Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize acknowledges “excellent civil society motion in protection of human rights” in Europe and elsewhere. The prize is price €60,000 and is awarded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in cooperation with the Charter 77 Foundation.
This article was translated from German
