A Conversation With Shirin Ebadi

t the Global Fund's recent event, "Women, Law and Democracy," Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi spoke with clarity from her perspective as an Iranian woman, lawyer and human rights activist, who is living and working under a repressive theocracy. In the conversation with Global Fund president Kavita N. Ramdas, Dr. Ebadi made three resounding points: first, that democracy requires society to make a clear separation between church and state, and to refuse to privilege any one religion over another; two, that democracy cannot be forced upon people at the point of a gun; and, last, but not least, that there can be no true democracy without guaranteeing women’s full freedom and equality.