Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian human rights lawyer who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. In 1975–79 she served as president of Tehran’s city court, but was forced to resign after the 1979 revolution. In the 1980s, she founded the Association for Children’s Rights, and was briefly jailed for her exposure of plans to assassinate dissidents. Among her books are The Rights of the Child: a study of legal aspects of children's rights in Iran (1994), and The History and Documentation of Human Rights in Iran (2000).

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An essential lesson of the age is that governments acquire their legitimacy through votes of people and respect for human rights, and that this is the best guarantee of security. Shirin Ebadi, Iranian human-rights lawyer and Nobel laureate, write exclusively for openDemocracy.

Is the United States’s love affair with human rights over? In the seventh of our Letters to Americans series, the Iranian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi writes a heartfelt letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, pioneer of American humanitarianism and commitment to the United Nations.