US diplomacy will pay tribute to Iranian women and girls who have been on the front lines of the Islamic Republic’s resistance movement during a special ceremony on Wednesday at the White House, the State Department announced on Monday.

This honor, named after former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who died last year, will be presented at the White House by first lady Jill Biden and current US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

“In the days following (Mahsha) Amini’s death, Iranian women and girls took to the streets, some removing and burning their headscarves and cutting their hair,” a State Department press release said.

“Their courage and defiance inspired waves of others, including men and boys, to join them en masse,” the text added, stressing that despite the crackdown unleashed by Iranian authorities, “women and girls persevered.”

The protest movement, which has been the target of a bloody crackdown with hundreds of dead, erupted in Iran following the death on September 16, 2022 of Mahsha Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been arrested by morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women.

Demonstrations for women’s rights and freedoms gradually transformed into a wider movement against the clerical regime, which spread to the streets, universities and even schools, despite the intensification of repression.

The US tribute comes amid a series of schoolgirl poisoning cases that have sparked strong emotional reactions in Iran.

The State Department honors women every year on International Women’s Day (March 8).

In addition to the women of Iran, ten personalities will be honored tomorrow for their work and the defense of women’s rights, among them Maiza Mohammed, journalist in Ethiopia, founder of the Roha TV station, as well as the former president of the Constitutional Court of the Central African Republic Republic Daniel Darlan.