Iranian writer Shirin Ebadi, a prominent democracy activist, won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her work promoting human rights, especially those of women and children.

Ebadi, 56, has worked actively to promote peaceful, democratic solutions in the struggle for human rights and is well-known and admired by Iranians for her defense in court of victims of attacks by hard-liners on freedom of speech and political freedom.

"As a lawyer, judge, lecturer, writer and activist, she has spoken out clearly and strongly in her country, Iran, far beyond its borders," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation.

It said she has stood up as a "sound professional, a courageous person, and has never heeded the threat to her own safety."

Ebadi was one of the first judges in Iran and received her law degree from the University of Tehran.

This year's prize is worth $1.3 million.

The medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace prizes were first awarded in 1901.

The secretive five-member awards committee, which is appointed by but does not answer to Norway's parliament, makes its choices in strict secrecy. It also keeps the names of candidates, a record 165 this year, secret for 50 years, although those who make nominations often reveal them.

The announcements of this year's Nobel awards started last week with the literature prize going to J.M. Coetzee of South Africa.

On Monday, American Paul C. Lauterbur, and Briton Sir Peter Mansfield were selected for the 2003 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discoveries leading to a technique that reveals images of the body's inner organs.

The physics prize on Tuesday went to Alexei A. Abrikosov, Anthony J. Leggett, and Vitaly L. Ginzburg, for their work concerning two phenomena called superconductivity and superfluidity.

On Wednesday, Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for studies of tiny transportation tunnels in cell walls, work that illuminates diseases of the heart, kidneys and nervous system.

American Robert F. Engle and Briton Clive W.J. Granger shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for developing statistical tools that have improved the forecasting of economic growth, interest rates and stock prices.

The prizes are presented to the winners on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. The Peace Prize is presented in Oslo.

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