Vancouver’s Nazanin Afshin-Jam is a beauty queen with a mission to save Iranian children from execution.
Afshin-Jam led a Stop Child Executions rally outside New York’s United Nations Building last week, catching the attention of Iran’s deputy state prosecutor. In Iran, there are 139 children awaiting execution on death row. One 12-year-old boy, Ahmed Nourzehi was sentenced to death for selling heroin. Last year, Iran executed 17 young offenders, usually killed by stonings or being hanged from a crane behind prison walls.
But Afshin-Jam’s pleas convinced the deputy state prosecutor to announce that he was banning child executions in that country. However, three days later, Hossein Zebhi altered his statement to apply only to child drug traffickers.
Afshin-Jam has said that she often feels like she’s taking one step forward one step back in her efforts, but she’s too driven to stop making a difference.
“Every time we showcase a child on death row in the media or put diplomatic pressure, they’re the ones who are released in the end,” she says. “By having large demonstrations and have people support, it shames the government of Iran… I’m not saying this protest alone will stop child executions altogether, but it will raise awareness.”
The 2005 Miss Canada beauty pageant winner, model, actress and singer also has two degrees (one in international relations), speaks four languages, has her pilot’s licence, and was a global youth advocate for the Red Cross. After she had won her Miss Canada title, she was asked to help a girl who shared her first name, Nazanin Fatehi, an Iranian girl who was on death row for killing one of the men who tried to rape her. Afshin-Jam’s international protest led to Fatehi recently being saved and released from prison.
Last year Afshin-Jam even released a pop album that made her a bit of a star in Iran, but her activism has also made her the target of death threats by Islamic fundamentalists.
For her efforts, actresses Anne Archer and Jenna Elfman presented her with the Hero Award for Human Rights a couple of years ago at the United Nations in New York. She has spoken on behalf of Amnesty International in Berlin as part of World Day Against the Death Penalty.
She’s also engaged in a debate at England’s Cambridge University on whether women are better suited to rule the world than men. Cambridge invited her back for a third debate, they were so impressed with her skills.
"I said to myself, 'Beauty shouldn't be a dirty word.' It's a blessing like anything else. And if you can use a blessing that God has given, you too advance in humanity -- there is nothing wrong with that,” she says.
