Narges Foundation

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi's address from Iran to the Oxford Union in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2025.

Speaking to young minds at the Oxford Union is a chance to connect with future leaders, in a place that has long been a home for bold ideas and meaningful conversations, especially in this upcoming term, which marks a historic milestone for the Oxford Union with its first-ever Black woman President.

Today I’m here to share with you my thoughts about the Iranian people’s battle for democracy in Iran and amplify the voice of our glorious movement “Woman, Life, Freedom”.

I wish I could be with you today in person but unfortunately the Islamic Republic Regime won’t even let me have a passport.

To better communicate, I’ll switch to Persian now.

I am a woman from the Middle East—one who has lived for more than four decades under a religiously driven, misogynistic, and authoritarian regime in Iran. Through my ongoing struggle for human rights, women’s rights, peace, and democracy, I have come to the undeniable conclusion that the Islamic Republic is an irreformable and profoundly ineffective regime, severely incapable of realizing the fundamental principles of democracy and human rights.

It is now clear to all of Iranian civil society that a religious tyranny—where clerical institutions are intertwined with civil law—is fundamentally incompatible with equality among citizens, regardless of gender, faith, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or social background. Through pervasive corruption and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few powerful men, the regime has proven ineffective in ensuring the dignity of workers, the right to live freely, and economic opportunities for youth.

The path to freedom lies only in the transition to democracy – a transition from a regime that has not only led the people to ruin today but has also destroyed their future. We are striving for the transition from the Islamic Republic, from religious tyranny to democracy.

When I speak of transitioning from dictatorship to democracy, I speak of an urgent necessity:

First and foremost, the Iranian people have the legitimacy to claim this fundamental right to self-determination through a system of free and fair elections, where the separation of judicial, executive, and legislative powers is genuine. A system where public freedoms—such as the rights to association, trade unions, artistic expression, academia, and the press—are upheld, and where political prisoners, as well as inhuman and cruel punishments like the death penalty, torture, or targeted assassinations, are no longer allowed.

The responsibility for advancing democracy in Iran primarily lies with Iranian civil society and the Iranian people themselves, but they are not the only ones involved in this struggle. We are witnessing a global effort to safeguard democracy, human rights, and women’s rights. Iranian civil society depends on the grassroots forces resisting tyranny, including students, teachers, workers, artists, writers, human rights and women’s activists, environmentalists, ethnic and religious minorities, and ordinary citizens from all generations and regions of Iran who resist the government through daily acts of civil disobedience.

Unfortunately, these forces face persecution and repression, and they urgently need international support. Supporting the Iranian people in their fight for democracy does not mean making decisions for them or resorting to military intervention. It means empowering civil society by providing platforms for local human rights organizations, utilizing international law and multilateral mechanisms to hold perpetrators accountable for grave human rights violations, and ensuring that those responsible face justice, ending their impunity. As human rights defenders, we firmly reject “the law of the strongest” and reaffirm the “rule of law”.

When I speak of the realization of women’s rights, I speak of half of Iran’s population of eighty-five million, who endure discriminatory and patriarchal laws that treat them as inferior citizens, denying them the same rights as men. This legal discrimination results in daily harm, including death, destruction, and the breakdown of their lives.

I live in a country where, according to official statistics, an average of 13 or 14 women are murdered each month, and in the month of April alone, at least 22 women were killed. These murders are often referred to as “honor killings,” usually carried out by fathers or brothers. Since under Islamic jurisprudence the father and paternal grandfather have legal guardianship over the child, the law does not even recognize these acts as murder deserving of capital punishment.

When I speak of the struggle for human rights, I am speaking of our daily life — where, every morning as we open our eyes, we are certain that at least three lifeless bodies are being brought down from the gallows.

We are witnessing a global trend of attacks on women’s rights, which threatens their autonomy over their bodies, their economic independence, and, in some cases, such as in Afghanistan, their right to education and even their right to exist.

Being a woman and mother in Iran, allow me to talk to you about numerous instances of gender-based discrimination at every stage of my life, just similar to millions of women across the country and the world.

Now I wish to present my argument through storytelling based on assumptions such as “democracy cannot be achieved without the realization of women’s rights and human rights,” “democracy without a civil society becomes lifeless and powerless,” and “the prerequisite for sustainable development and lasting peace is the elimination of any form of discrimination and the realization of social justice, including that of gender.”

I was a seven-year-old child when I first entered elementary school after the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Although according to religious decree, girls at the age of nine and boys at fifteen are deemed to have reached the “age of religious obligation” and are required to observe religious law, we were forced to wear the compulsory hijab at the age of seven. That piece of cloth was placed on our heads in the name of religion. Later, when I attended university, I even had to conduct experiments in laser laboratories while wearing the mandatory chador.

Today, I am unequivocally certain that the compulsory hijab is not a religious obligation, but rather a tool used to control women and extend that control throughout society. It imposes a system in which husbands and brothers are held accountable for the behavior of women within their families.

When I became an inspector engineer and worked at an engineering inspection company, my salary was lower than that of male engineers, and major projects were handed to the men, despite the fact that women’s precision in project inspections was often praised.

When I became a mother, even for my son Ali’s surgery — at the age of seven, while his father was exiled in France — the hospital did not recognize my authority. Instead, Ali’s father’s lawyer had to sign the consent for Ali to be admitted.

When I sat face-to-face with my interrogator in solitary confinement, he said with contempt: “What business do you have fighting? Stay at home and raise your children.”

The Islamic Republic, through the systematic denial of fundamental rights to women and the implementation of laws that institutionalized discrimination via a gender-apartheid legal framework, relegates women to subordinate roles within both society and the family. This legal system isolates them and exposes them to systemic violence. In such a misogynistic regime, laws serve as critical instruments in perpetuating discrimination, subjugation, and violence against women.

In the Middle East, regimes such as the Islamic Republic and the Taliban, by the merging of the religious and the governmental authority, systematically violate women’s rights, both in public spaces and within private homes.

From the very early days of the Islamic Republic’s establishment in 1979, women in Iran took various paths of protest and resistance against discrimination, oppression, and violence.

You witnessed the magnificent “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022 — a movement that grew upon the foundation of previous social and democratic struggles and was the result of more than four decades of relentless activism, especially by women. It was a movement where women were agents of change.

We are witnessing significant changes among women and men, among families, and across different groups and social classes — changes that continue to fuel hope for achieving democracy, freedom, and equality.

Struggle and resistance flow through the veins of Iranian society in everyday life.

And I hope that through the perseverance, resilience, and struggle of the Iranian people, and with the support of international organizations, we will witness the victory of the people of Iran in their transition from tyranny to democracy.

In hopes of the day of victory,
The day of achieving democracy and attaining freedom and equality.

Narges Mohammadi
Tehran – Iran
28th April 2025