Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Yemeni
campaigner Tawakkul Karman have been jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Liberian
president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the first woman to be elected head of state in
an African country, and the first person to lead a reconciled Liberia following the
country’s devastating civil wars that ran from the late 1980’s into the first half
of the last decade. Leymah Gbowee is a peace activist in Liberia, whose “Women of
Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement was instrumental in bringing the civil strife
in her country to an end. Tawakkul Karman is a campaigner for human and civil rights
in Yemen, where she heads the Women Journalists Without Chains advocacy group, and
organizes peaceful protests in the capital San’aa, agitating for democratic reform.
The citation from the Nobel Committee expresses the hope that the award this year
will help bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries,
and to realise the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.
Listen