Shirin Ebadi

Those words were said by the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in Iran, "Shirin Ebadi." Shirin has accomplished a lot and she was recognized in the year 2003 for all of her good deeds. She is a hero and I think everyone should look up to her because she is a woman that fought for the rights of women and children and today in our world we rarely find women that are strong enough to do that. She is a hero to me because I think someone that stands up for human rights is brave, courageous, and of course strong and one day when I grow up I dream of becoming a woman like Shirin.

Shirin Ebadi was born in the city of Hamedan but later moved to Tehran. She won several awards in her school when she was young. Shirin was surrounded by people that were very peaceful and caring, not just that but her father was a lawyer. He always told her how she should help people and fight for human rights. When she grew up she chose to be like her father. In 1975, she became the President of Bench 24 of the Tehran City Court. She was the first woman in the history of Iranian justice to have served as a judge.

Shirin is a very active woman in her community. She fought for children's rights in 1995 and defended many cases like the murder of innocent kids. She created the Association for Support of Children's Rights (in 1995) and the Human Rights Defense Center (in 2001) and became known outside Iran for her clashes with the country's ruling clerics. The 2003 announcement from the Nobel Committee praised Ebadi for "her efforts for democracy and human rights". She also provided free tuition to kids that didn't have the money to go to schools. Not only that but she wrote books on children's and human rights. One of the books was The Rights of the Child in 1993.

I hope that someday I will become a strong and highly educated woman in society like Shirin is and I hope that I will be able someday to let the world hear my voice and see how much I care about our rights as humans.

"The Beauty of life is to fight in a difficult situation like it is in Iran." Shirin Ebadi said this in a speech at the Human Rights Center in Norway. We are alive once. I think each one of us should take the privilege of this lifetime and make a change that would be remembered when we leave this world. Shirin Ebadi was the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She spent many years helping and defending people in court. She has sacrificed a lot to her country and she deserves even more than a Nobel Peace prize. All she wants is peace in her country and around the world and she fought for it. She doesn't care what the consequences are, she went right for it and that's what a real hero is.