A combination of three recent photos shows (from L) Yemen's Arab Spring activist Tawakkul Karman, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Liberian "peace warrior" Leymah Gbowee who won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize the jury announced on October 7, 2011. The three prizewinners share the 2011 award "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work," Norwegian Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern Jagland said in his announcement.
----MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Three Activist Women
By ALAN COWELL
Published: October 7, 2011
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded on Friday to three campaigning women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. The winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner.
They were the first women to win the prize since Kenya’s Wangari Maathai, who died last month, was named as the laureate in 2004. Most of the recipients in the award’s 110-year history have been men, and the award seemed designed to give impetus to the cause for women’s rights around the world.
“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said the citation read to reporters by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based Nobel committee that chooses the winner of the $1.5 million prize.
In a subsequent interview, he described the prize as “a very important signal to women all over the world.”
As the prize was announced, Bushuben Keita, a spokesman for Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf’s Unity Party, declared: “We are dancing. This is the thing that we have been saying, progress has been made in Liberia. We’ve come through 14 years of war and we have come to sustained peace. We’ve already started dancing.
“This is proof that she has been doing well, there’s no cheating in this, this comes from other people. She’s doing very, very well. Her progress has been confirmed by the international community.”
In Yemen, Ms. Karman, 32, sat in a tent where has been living since February as part of the sit-in organized to underscore demands for change. “This is the victory of our peaceful revolution,” she said. “I am so happy and I give this award to all of the youth and all of the women across the Arab world, in Egypt, in Tunisia.”
“We cannot build our country or any country in the world without peace,” she said.
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NYSL: Leymah Gbowee on "Mighty Be Our Powers"
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at Harvard Commencement
توكل كرمان - Tawakkul Karman - Nobel Peace Prize winner
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