OSLO (AFP) – Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian
“peace warrior” Leymah Gbowee and Yemen’s Arab Spring activist Tawakkul
Karman on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize, the jury said.
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.
“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,” he added.
Sirleaf, 72, made history when she became Africa’s first elected
woman president in 2005. She took power in a nation traumatised by 14
years of brutal civil war that left 250,000 dead and economic
devastation, with no electricity, running water or infrastructure.
The Nobel Committee said that “since her inauguration in 2006, she
has contributed to securing peace in Liberia, to promoting economic and
social development, and to strengthening the position of women.”
Sirleaf’s rise to power might not have been possible without the
efforts of Gbowee, 39, an activist who led Liberia’s women to defy
feared warlords.
She pushed men toward peace by inspiring a large group of both
Christian and Muslim women to wage a sex strike during what was one of
Africa’s bloodiest wars.
The Nobel Committee hailed Gbowee for having “organised women across
ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in
Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections.”
Tawakkul Karman is a 32-year-old Yemeni activist and journalist who
has braved several stints in prison in her struggle for women’s rights,
press freedom and the release of political prisoners in Yemen.
She is the first Arab woman to the win the Peace Prize.
The Nobel jury hailed her for “in the most trying circumstances, both
before and during the ‘Arab Spring’… (playing) a leading part in the
struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.”