Nobel Winner Rates Freedom As Most Precious Possession

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Transcript of Shirin Ebadi's Lecture
B-SPAN Webcast in English & Farsi

Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi

In a Presidential Lecture at World Bank headquarters in Washington DC, Ebadi said human rights was crucial to development.

"One cannot deny that if poverty grows at such a rate, wealthy countries will be affected as well," Ebadi said. "Who will buy their products? This won't be possible unless wealthy countries assist nations in need."

A need to correct the imbalance

"Extreme poverty and hunger cannot be eradicated without global cooperation," she said.

To illustrate her case, she compared the daily income of 80% of the people in Uganda, who subsist on less than a dollar a day , while in Scandinavian countries no one has an income as low as a dollar a day. In Angola, she said, 150 out of 1000 infants die due to hunger and poverty, while the same figure in the US and European countries ranges from one to 10 infants.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn and Shirin Ebadi

Ebadi urged the Bank and other members of the international community not to lend to undemocratic countries.

To give loans to monarchs who didn't pay attention to the rights of their people was to stamp out human rights in that country; and  to give loans to countries where there was no oversight of the government would, she said, stamp out the human rights of the people.

"Moreover, all dictators and tyrants will one day be brought down by their people," Ebadi said. "Palaces of tyrants will one day fall and that's when oppressed people will revolt against the governments and the policies they believe kept these regimes in power. Anger is the enemy of intellect," she warned the audience. "Freedom is the most precious thing a human being can possess."

President JamesD. Wolfensohn called the lecture, "extremely stimulating and provocative." The Presidential Fellows program, a Wolfensohn initiative, brings in eminent thinkers or corporate leaders to share their experiences with Bank staff. Some previous speakers were Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate and Economist; Mike Moore, former Director General of the WTO; Bertie Ahern, Prime Minister of Ireland; Jacques Delors, former President of the European Commission and Professor Chinua Achebe, distinguished African author and teacher. Ebadi was the 14th speaker in this series.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn and Shirin Ebadi

Ebadi is a lawyer and teaches at the University of Tehran. She was one of the country's first female judges and the President of the city court of Tehran from 1975 to 1979, when she was forced to resign after the revolution along with 100 other female judges. She has been a strong advocate of the rights of women and children.

As an attorney, Ebadi has fought several cases against the violence used to silence student  challenges to change government practices. She was also the attorney for families of writers and intellectuals who were murdered in 1999-2000. She has been imprisoned several times due to the controversial nature of her work.