On Saturday, February 21, 2026, on the eve of March 8, International Women’s Day, the NCRI Women’s Committee hosted an international conference in Paris entitled “Women’s Leadership: An Imperative for a Free Iran and a Democratic Republic.” The conference, attended by women legislators, academics, thinkers, and
prominent political figures, focused on women’s political participation and leadership as a decisive element in a democratic society.
Dominique Attias, Chair of the Board of Directors of the European Lawyers Federation, participated in this conference and delivered a speech. The full text of her speech is provided below:
Dominique Attias: This Uprising Fueled by Women-Led Resistance Units
Women of Iran, sisters of Iran, yes, they are our sisters.
Your history is not a parenthesis between two oppressions. It is a continuous political presence. You were already present in ancient Persia, present in the revolutions of the 20th century, and present in contemporary resistance.
What we see today is not a break from the past but the reaffirmation of an ancient tradition. Iranian women are not spectators of history; they are actors. They embody a frontal struggle between a people and a dictatorship. Since 1979, the mullahs’ regime has confiscated fundamental freedoms. In Iran, as you know, dissent leads to prison, torture, or the gallows. Yet the people resist, and at the heart of this resistance are the women.
In 2022, the death of Mahsa Jina Amini triggered a shockwave. This uprising is not a single event; it is the result of over forty years of humiliation, censorship, state violence, and the struggles of the Iranian resistance, led primarily by the women of the People’s Mojahedin Organization. The result of the struggle of these Resistance Units, mostly composed of women, you saw them earlier, what courage.
We remember all of them, we remember Zahra BAhlouli, who also fell on January 8, all the resistant women, and all the Resistance Units killed for freedom.
Also, the struggle of my sisters at Ashraf 3, whom I had the happiness, as many of you did, to meet. What joy, and what honor for me as well. The slogan that arose in 2022 was “Woman, Life, Freedom,” but for the female fighters of the People’s Mojahedin, it became “Woman, Resistance, Freedom.”
As a symbol of a society that wants to breathe, Iranian women have become central political actors. They are no longer merely victims of a system; they are conscious adversaries. Their image has been transformed. Iranian women are no longer simply oppressed; they are engines of change. They are a message to the entire world, a message to international solidarity that can no longer be merely moral. “Woman, Resistance, Freedom”, this slogan expresses a simple and revolutionary truth: a regime that oppresses women oppresses society as a whole. A regime that controls bodies will always seek to control minds.
Iranian women are not demanding privileges. They demand, and you have said it, equality before the law, freedom of speech, the right to study, to work, to create, to decide, the right to be full citizens. Long-standing demands, Madame Rajavi; you are the legitimate political leader of this resistance, but also the architect of a philosophical transformation of the vision of women in Iran.
Dominique Attias: Freedom Is Not Given, It Must Be Earned
Facing all these resistances is a ruthless state apparatus, as the whole world has seen through recent massacres and intensified repression. All these young people were killed for protesting. This regime fears not only slogans, but it also fears a generation that no longer trembles. What makes this movement so powerful is that it goes beyond the issue of women. Men march alongside you, students join workers, and ethnic and religious minorities unite.
The real question is not just what is happening in Iran, but what are we doing in response? Can we continue to treat this regime as an ordinary interlocutor while it massacres, imprisons, tortures, and executes its opponents? Can we speak of stability when stability relies on a regime of terror?
Iranian women remind us of a fundamental truth. Freedom is never given, it is conquered. And you are, in the process of conquering it at the highest price. This struggle is not only about Iranian women. It speaks to the value of our principles, our human rights principles. When a woman in Iran rises at the risk of her life to claim freedom and pays the ultimate price, she is not only defending her own future. She is defending the universal idea that no one should live under the terror of a state.
So let us repeat it, let us carry it, let us refuse indifference, because your courage, their courage, compels us. Let us never stop standing by them and never stop shouting: “Woman, Resistance, Freedom”, and also “No Shah No Mullah.”
