Moloud Hajizadeh

Moloud Hajizadeh is a journalist and women's rights activist from Iran. She holds a bachelor's degree in Economics and a master's degree in International Relations. Her journalistic work focuses on politics, economics, and women's rights issues. As a result, she faced harassment, threats, and arrests while living and working in Iran.

Hajizadeh began her journalistic career in 2004, mostly covering the field of political economy in the newspapers Etemad, Bahar, Donya-e-Eqtsad; the magazines Mehrnameh and Seda; and for the news agencies ILNA and CHN, among others. She has also led journalism courses in Iran, as well as at the Kateb University in Kabul, Afghanistan. She currently works as a freelance journalist for the Persian section of the UK newspaper, The Independent.

Additionally, Hajizadeh has worked for over ten years with several women’s organisations, focused on issues of access to education, gender-based violence, and organizing training courses for immigrant women. Organisations where Hajizadeh worked include Khaneh Khorshid, or Sun House, and the Domestic Violence Campaign.

In 2019, Hajizadeh’s home was raided multiple times, her belongings confiscated and destroyed and she was unofficially blacklisted when seeking employment. Finally, she was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for charges of 'propaganda against the state' and 'disturbance of public opinion'.She was released on bail, but was sentenced to do forced labor at a convalescence home for former revolutionary guards. She was arrested again in 2021 and sentenced to more than 3 years in prison.

In 2021, Hajizadeh was welcomed as an ICORN writer in residence in the Norwegian city of Larvik. From the safety of her residency, she continues to write about the challenges women living in Iran face and the pervasive repression of activist and civil society.

To learn more about Hajizadeh’s current work, you can follow her on Instagram and X/Twitter at @HajizadehMoloud.