Shirin Ebadi to Oslo in October

Ms Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2003, is an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist. She also received the Rafto Prize in 2001, awarded by the Thorolf Rafto Foundation for Human Rights, one of the member organisations of the Human Rights House Network. Ms Ebadi will open the international conference on 13 october together with Mr Thorbjørn Jagland, Head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Norwegian Parliament.

Activists under attack
The conference is held in relation to the 10th Anniversary of the Human Rights House Network. The title of the conference is “Activists under Attack. Defending the Right to be a Human Rights Defender”.

– We are honoured that Shirin Ebadi has accepted our invitation, says Borghild T. Krokan, Project Manager at the Human Rights House Foundation. – It is of great importance and inspiration to other activists to meet such a prominent human rights defender and learn about her experiences.

Human Rights House in Iran?

Shirin Ebadi will also have talks with the Human Rights House Foundation about further cooperation and the possibility of establishing a Human Rights House in Iran, inspired by the Norwegian model.

– We will discuss how to best support human rights work in Iran. Ebadi has mentioned the establishment of a Human Rights House as one alternative, says Maria Dahle, Executive Director of the Human Rights House Foundation. 

Deteriorating security and working conditions

The focus of the conference will be the deteriorating security and working conditions of human rights defenders. This tendency can be traced not only in an increase in the number of for instance incidents of harassment, threats, torture or unlawful arrests, but also in more subtle ways, such as a step-by-step undermining of funding opportunities, increasingly complex regulations on registration and re-registration or other kinds of suffocating bureaucracy.

Growing tendency
Representatives of governments, human rights organisations and international experts will participate at the conference. A representative from the UN Secretary General´s special representative for human rights defenders will also attend the conference. The UN office has identified a growing universal tendency to clamp down on independent human rights organisations and individual activists alike.