| Kippreport.com

Nobel honours African, Arab women for peace

October 8, 2011 8:22 by Reuters

Declaring women’s rights vital for world peace, the Nobel Committee awarded its annual Peace Prize on Friday to three indomitable female campaigners against war and oppression — a Yemeni and two Liberians, including that country’s president.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (leftmost in photo), the first woman freely elected as a head of state in Africa, shared the award worth $1.5 million with compatriot Leymah Gbowee (middle of photo), who promoted a “sex strike” among efforts to end Liberia’s civil war, and Yemen’s Tawakul Karman (rightmost of photo), who called her honour “a victory for the Arab Spring”.

“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,” Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told reporters. “This is to highlight an incredibly important issue all over the world but especially in Africa and in the Arab world.”

Karman, 32, an Islamist journalist dubbed the “Mother of the Revolution”, has been a key figure in protests in the capital Sanaa this year. “This is a victory for the Arab Spring in Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen,” she told Reuters. “This is a message that the era of Arab dictatorships is over.”

Typically, the mother-of-three was out demonstrating in a central square in Sanaa for the departure of veteran Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh when she heard the news.

Johnson-Sirleaf, 72, a former World Bank economist known as the “Iron Lady” by opponents, called the prize a recognition of her nation’s “many years of struggle for justice, peace, and promotion of development” since a brutal decade of civil war.

“The credit goes to the Liberian people,” she said in the capital Monrovia after hearing the announcement from Oslo.

Gbowee, 39, received the news belatedly when she switched on her mobile phone after landing in New York on a book tour.

“All I keep hearing in my head is the song of praise to God,” she said. “My work is for survival for myself and for other women…With or without a Nobel I will still do what I do because I am a symbol of hope in my community on the continent, in a place where there is little to be hopeful for.”

Her Women For Peace movement is credited with helping end Liberia’s war in 2003. Starting with prayers and songs at a market, she also urged wives and girlfriends of leaders of the warring factions to deny them sex until they laid down their arms.

SIRLEAF NOT WORTHY LAUREATE, RIVALS SAY
Liberian opposition leaders Winston Tubman and George Weah said Johnson-Sirleaf did not deserve the Nobel Prize and that awarding it to her was a “provocative intervention” in Liberian politics in the midst of a tight presidential election race.

Jagland rejected suggestions that the panel’s decision might skew the election on Tuesday by giving Johnson-Sirleaf a boost in her bid for a second term.

But he called the award to Karman a signal to Arab autocrats that it was time to go, as well as a warning to new leaders, including Islamists, to protect women’s rights.

“If you look at the Arab Spring, this is a crucial issue,” Jagland told Reuters. “Unless they include the women in the development there, then they will fail …

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Tags: Arab Spring, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize, Tawakul Karman