UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Friday, 16 September 2011 at 3.30 p.m.
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR COLIN SCOTT, Dean, UCD School of Law, University College Dublin on 16 September 2011, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa on SHIRIN EBADI
President, Distinguished Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen
Dr Shirin Ebadi is a lawyer, lecturer and human rights activist whose life’s work has been to seek the achievement by peaceful means of democratic and human rights for the people of her native Iran. In pursuit of thee ideas she has deployed her skills as a lawyer with great courage and commitment. Whilst she has made strenuous use of judicial processes for advancing human rights she has acted on the insight that frequently the best guarantees lie in the codification of rights in national legislation. It is for her achievements in mobilising law for the advancement of good in her society, and in particular advancing the rights of women and children, that in 2003 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She was the first person from Iran and the first muslim women to receive this award. Many other honours bestowed on Dr Ebadi also provide recognition of her significant role in this struggle.
Born in Hamadan, Iran, Dr Shirin Ebadi was raised and studied in Tehran. She has written of how she was treated equally with her brother while she was a child, against convention in that society, and of how her father championed her independence. She completed a law degree (and later a doctorate in private law) and immediately proceeded to complete the education and training necessary to become one of the first woman judges in Iran in 1969. Following the Islamic revolution of 1979 the new Iranian government implemented a policy which prohibited women from serving as judges and Dr Ebadi was demoted to a position as a clerical assistant in the court over which she once presided. The protests of Dr Ebadi and of the other women affected resulted only in a modest promotion to positions of legal experts within the Department of Justice and she was subsequently permitted to end this frustrating situation by taking early retirement.
During a thirteen year period during which she sought a licence to practise as a lawyer Dr Ebadi turned to reflection, writing and teaching in the field of human rights. Her legal practice has focused also on human rights, and in particular the rights of journalists to practice their calling, and other victims of human rights abuses, notably women and children. In 2001 she established an NGO in Tehran, the Human Rights Defenders Centre, which was reported by the BBC in 2010 to have been closed down by the government.
Dr Ebadi’s activities in the pursuit of human rights have put her in constant danger. In the preface of her remarkable autobiography, Iran Awakening, Dr Ebadi writes of reading through thousands of pages of files in a case in which the state was, for the first time, defending accusations of state-sponsored murder. She notes her shock at finding a file note of a conversation between a death squad member and a government minister in which it was states ‘the next person to be killed is Shirin Ebadi’.
The particular context of Dr Ebadi’s struggle for rights in Iran has engaged her with a central question of contemporary global governance, namely whether there is some necessary incompatibility between Isla, and the implementation of democratic governance and human rights. Dr Ebadi’s experience and thinking has led her to a position that human rights are indivisible and, in that sense, transcendental or universal in their application across humanity. The discrimination against women which she has witnesses and experienced is, she argues, a product of a patriarchal and male-dominated culture and not religion. It is a culture which is protective of the interests of traditional rulers. Dr Ebadi embraced an expansive conception of rights which extends beyond civil and political rights to embrace social and economic rights. This position puts her at the forefront of human rights advocacy not only in Iran, but internationally.
Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 Dr Ebadi said:
If the 21st Century wishes to free itself from the cycle of violence, acts of terror and war and avoid repetition of the experience of the 20th century – that most disaster ridden century of human-kind – there is no other way except by understanding and putting into practice every human right for all mankind irrespective of race, gender, faith, nationality or social status.
The award of a degree honoris causa is sometimes translated to refer to an honorary degree when, with greater accuracy, it is a degree awarded for the sake of honour. Today University College Dublin adds its own recognition to the commitment to justice and equality of Dr Shirin Ebadi with the award of the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hanc meam filiam, quam scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneam esse quae admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in utroque Jure, tam Civili quam Canonico; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.