"Championing rights for all, 3 women accept peace prize" December 11, 2011|By Bjoern H. Amland, Associated Press
OSLO - Three women who fought injustice, dictatorship, and sexual violence in Liberia and Yemen accepted the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, calling on repressed women worldwide to rise up against male supremacy....
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"3 women awarded Nobel Peace Prize" October 08, 2011|New York Times
LONDON - The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded yesterday to three women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy, and gender equality.
Gandhi never one one so the globalist clap on the back really doesn't mean much in these eyes.
The winners were President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Africa’s first elected female president; her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee; and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a prodemocracy 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 yesterday’s decision seemed designed to give impetus to the cause of 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 by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based committee that chooses the winner of the $1.5 million prize.
In a subsequent interview, Jagland described the prize as “a very important signal to women all over the world.’’
Johnson Sirleaf is nearing the end of a heated reelection campaign. In Monrovia, the Liberian capital, her opponents joined a big rally before Tuesday’s vote.
Jagland said the election had not influenced the committee’s decision, calling the ballot there a “domestic consideration.’’ Analysts in Liberia have described the president’s reelection prospects as uncertain, although the announcement from Oslo yesterday could change that.
But the Nobel committee’s decision underscored the gap between local perceptions of her - it is not hard to find critics of the president in Liberia - and the view from abroad.
Indeed, her success in securing forgiveness for billion of dollars of Liberian debt and the change she has effected in Liberia’s international image are less appreciated in Monrovia than among outsiders. Her campaign has denied opponents’ charges of corruption.
As the prize was announced, Bushuben Keita, a spokesman for 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.
“This is proof that she has been doing well… . Her progress has been confirmed by the international community.’’
In Yemen yesterday, Karman, 32, sat in a tent where she has been living since February as part of the sit-in organized to press 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.
More than 250 people were nominated for the prize this year, and there had been speculation that it would reward bloggers or other activists from the Middle East using social networking sites and other Internet platforms as they challenged entrenched dictatorships, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt.
But if the committee had singled out the Arab Spring, it would have courted criticism that, far from rewarding efforts toward peace, it had chosen a phenomenon whose final outcome in Egypt and Tunisia is far from clear and which has provoked bloodletting and strife in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
Jagland said the 2011 prize recognized those “who were there long before the world’s media was there reporting.’’
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