Shadi Sadr receives Lech Walesa award
Shadi Sadr, prominent women’s rights activist and director of Hivos partner Raahi in Tehran, received the Lech Walesa award on Monday, September 28. Sadr is founder & director of Raahi, an organisation which provides legal advice for women in Iran. Hivos supported Raahi for several years till March 2007 when the organisation was closed by the Iranian authorities.
She is also the founder of Zanan-e Iran (Women of Iran) the first website dedicated to the work of Iranian women's rights activists and she is a leading figure in the “Stop stoning forever campaign” against capital punishment by stoning. As a lawyer she has represented activists and journalists as well as several women sentenced to death, some of whose convictions were subsequently overturned.
The Lech Walesa price was created in 2008 to “reward those who work for understanding and cooperation among nations in the name of freedom and the values of Solidarity”. Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his non-violent struggle. He became post-war Poland’s first democratically-elected president in 1990, a year after the collapse of communist rule.
An amount of 100.000 Euro is connected to the prize which Sadr will equally share with Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand, the two other Iranian rights activists who were selected for the prize.
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