Biography

Shirin Ebadi was born on June 21, 1947 in Tehran, Iran.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2003.

First Iranian and Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Is a huge fan of Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

[on supporting the lifting of sanctions on Iran] By placing sanctions against the government we can neither topple the government nor change its behavior. The best example of it would be North Korea. That government is still there, while the people are getting poorer every day.

[on why she avoids the phrase 'Arab Spring] The rising of the people in Arab countries did not bring democracy to those countries. Spring is a season of the eruption of the light coming, and there's everything good about it. None of that happened. I prefer the 'suppressed rising of the people'.