Speech topic:

International Policies and Human Rights

Mehrangiz Kar is an attorney, writer, and activist working toward the promotion of democracy, rule of law, and human rights within the framework of Islamic law in the Islamic Republic of Iran since the revolution in 1979. She was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard (2004-05), as well as a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (2005-06). She has also been recognized as a Scholar at Risk. In April 2000, following her participation in a symposium in Berlin, she was arrested and imprisoned on charges of acting against the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Three of the five charges against her are pending, for which she may again be arrested upon her return. She was the 2004 recipient of the annual Human Rights First (formerly Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights) Human Rights Award and in 2002 received the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize (France) for a lawyer working to promote women’s human rights, awarded jointly by the Human Rights Institute of the Bar of Bordeaux and the European Lawyers’ Union.