(On This International Day Of Peace, Learn About 18 Women Who Are Recipients Of The Noble Peace Prize For Peace)
21st September is celebrated as the International Day of Peace, every year, since 1981. In 2001, the General Assembly designated this day for observance of 24 hours of non-violence and cease-fire. To mark this day, let us learn about women who made a real difference to our global pursuit of peace and are recipients of the Nobel Prize For Peace.
Nadia Murad (Nobel Peace Prize 2018)
Sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict constitutes both a war crime and a threat to peace and security. Nadia Murad is a member of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, and in 2014 the Islamic State (IS) launched a brutal attack on her home village. Several hundred people were massacred, and girls and young women were abducted and held as sex slaves. While a captive of the IS, Nadia Murad was repeatedly subjected to rape and other abuses. After three months she managed to flee. She now works to help women and children who are victims of abuse and human trafficking.
Malala Yousafzai (Nobel Peace Prize 2014)
Much of the world’s population, especially in poor countries, is made up of children and young people. To achieve a peaceful world, it is crucial that the rights of children and young people be respected. Injustices perpetrated against children contribute to the spread of conflicts to future generations. Already at eleven years of age Malala Yousafzai fought for girls’ right to education. After having suffered an attack on her life by Taliban gunmen in 2012, she has continued her struggle and become a leading advocate of girls’ rights.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Nobel Peace Prize 2011)
Women often suffer most when wars and conflicts erupt. At the same time, their opportunity to influence events during conflicts is often severely limited. Women’s rights and full participation in democratic processes are important to ensure lasting peace. In Liberia, bloody civil wars ravaged the country between 1989 and 2003. In 2005, two years after the guns fell silent, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected as the nation’s president. As the first female head of state ever to be democratically elected in Africa, she has worked to promote peace, reconciliation and social and economic development.
Leymah Gbowee (Nobel Peace Prize 2011)
Women’s rights and full participation in democratic processes are important to ensure lasting peace. In Liberia, bloody civil wars had ravaged the country since 1989 when Leymah Gbowee called together women from different ethnic and religious groups in the fight for peace. Dressed in white T-shirts they held daily demonstrations at the fishmarket in Monrovia. After having collected money she led a delegation of Liberian women to Ghana to put pressure on the warring factions during the peace-talk process. This played a decisive role in ending the war.
Tawakkol Karman (Nobel Peace Prize 2011)
Women’s rights and full participation in democratic processes are important to ensure lasting peace. In Yemen, democratic rights are restricted. In 2005, Tawakkol Karman co-founded the group Women Journalists Without Chains, in order to promote freedom of expression and democratic rights. From 2007 to 2010, she regularly led demonstrations and sit-ins in Tahrir Square, Sana’a. She actively participated in the 2011 protests against ruling regimes that took place in a number of Arab countries.
Shirin Ebadi (Nobel Peace Prize 2003)
The Nobel Peace Prize 2003 was awarded to Shirin Ebadi “for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children.”
As a lawyer, judge, lecturer, writer and activist, she has spoken out clearly and strongly in her country, Iran, and far beyond its borders. She has stood up as a sound professional, a courageous person, and has never heeded the threats to her own safety.
Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize 2004)
Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She was also the first female scholar from East and Central Africa to take a doctorate (in biology), and the first female professor ever in her home country of Kenya. Maathai played an active part in the struggle for democracy in Kenya, and belonged to the opposition to Daniel arap Moi’s regime.
In 1977 she started a grass-roots movement aimed at countering the deforestation that was threatening the means of subsistence of the agricultural population. The campaign encouraged women to plant trees in their local environments and to think ecologically. The so-called Green Belt Movement spread to other African countries, and contributed to the planting of over thirty million trees.
Maathai’s mobilisation of African women was not limited in its vision to work for sustainable development; she saw tree-planting in a broader perspective which included democracy, women’s rights, and international solidarity. In the words of the Nobel Committee: “She thinks globally and acts locally.”
Jody Williams (Nobel Peace Prize 1997)
When Jody Williams was studying international politics in the 1980s, she became involved in aid work in war-torn El Salvador. Landmines were a constant threat to the civilian population, and she was given responsibility for providing artificial limbs for children who had lost arms and legs.
From 1991 on, Jody Williams was a driving force in the launching of an international campaign against landmines. By 1997, thanks to her strength and organizational talent, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) had 1,000 organizations from 60 countries on its list of members.
The Ottawa Convention, which was signed by 120 states and entered into force in 1999, will always be associated with the names of Jody Williams and the ICBL. It banned the use, production, sale and stock-piling of anti-personnel mines. In addition it contained provisions concerning mine clearance and the obligation to provide humanitarian assistance.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Nobel Peace Prize 1992)
In 1992 the western world celebrated that it was 500 years since Columbus reached America. In the same year, the Guatemalan indigenous woman Rigoberta Menchú was awarded the Peace Prize for her work for the rights of indigenous peoples and reconciliation between ethnic groups. Indigenous organizations lobbied for her nomination, they wanted to draw attention to the fact that the European discovery of America had entailed the extermination and suppression of indigenous populations.
Rigoberta grew up in a country marked by extreme violence. Several members of her own family were killed by the army, which was hunting down opponents of the regime. She herself fled to Mexico in the early 1980s, where she came into contact with European groups that were working for human rights in Latin America. With time, Rigoberta began to favor a policy of reconciliation with the authorities, and Norway served as the intermediary in negotiations between the government and the guerrilla organizations. A peace agreement was signed in 1996. Rigoberta Menchú herself became a UN Ambassador for the world’s indigenous peoples.
Aung San Suu Kyi (Nobel Peace Prize 1991)
The Burmese Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of the legendary liberation movement leader Aung San. Following studies abroad, she returned home in 1988. From then on, she led the opposition to the military junta that had ruled Burma since 1962. She was one of the founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and was elected secretary general of the party. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all use of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government. The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country’s ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony.
In the election in 1990, the NLD won a clear victory, but the generals prevented the legislative assembly from convening. Instead they continued to arrest members of the opposition and refused to release Suu Kyi from house arrest.
The Peace Prize had a significant impact in mobilizing world opinion in favor of Aung San Suu Kyi’s cause. However, she remained under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from her arrest in July 1989 until her release on 13 November 2010, whereupon she was able to resume her political career and put her mark on the rapid democratization of Myanmar.
Alva Myrdal (Nobel Peace Prize 1982)
Alva Myrdal already had an extensive career behind her when she was elected to the Swedish “riksdag” (legislative assembly) in 1962. She had studied philology and pedagogy, and in the inter-war years devoted herself to improving the conditions of the working class through the Social Democrat Party. She also made a name for herself as a campaigner for women’s rights.
After World War II, Alva Myrdal held prominent posts in the United Nations system, hand-picked by the Secretary-General. She was among other things head of UNESCO’s social science section. From 1955 she was Swedish Ambassador to India.
It was, however, as the government minister in charge of disarmament issues that Alva Myrdal really stood out as an innovator. As the representative of a non-aligned Sweden, she worked actively to persuade the superpowers to disarm. The nuclear race was a major concern, and she fought for nuclear weapons-free zones in Europe. Each individual country ought to take the initiative and ban nuclear arms on its territory.
Mother Teresa (Nobel Peace Prize 1979)
At the age of twelve, the Catholic Albanian girl Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu heard a call. God demanded that she devote her life to Him. She entered a nunnery, received an education, and was sent to Calcutta in India to be a teacher. Her new name was Teresa. In India she received a second call from God: to help the poor while living among them. She founded a new sisterhood, Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa and her helpers built homes for orphans, nursing homes for lepers and hospices for the terminally ill in Calcutta. Mother Teresa’s organization also engaged in aid work in other parts of the world.
The modest nun became known all over the world, and money poured in. But she was also criticized. It was alleged that dying people in the hospices were refused pain relief, whereas Mother Teresa herself accepted hospital treatment. She also held a conservative view on abortion. She was regarded as a spokesperson for the Vatican. In 2003, the Pope took the first step towards her canonization.
In 2016, Mother Teresa was declared a saint by Pope Francis.
Betty Williams (Nobel Peace Prize 1976)
In 1976, three innocent children were killed in a shooting incident in Belfast. The housewife and secretary Betty Williams witnessed the tragedy. She decided to launch an appeal against the meaningless use of violence in the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Betty was joined by the dead children\’s aunt, Mairead Corrigan, and together they founded the peace organization the Community of Peace People.
Betty Williams had a Protestant father and Catholic mother, a family background from which she derived religious tolerance and a breadth of vision that motivated her to work for peace. Early in the 1970s she joined an anti-violence campaign headed by a Protestant priest, before she threw herself with full force into grass-root activities for the Peace People. By setting up local peace groups comprising former opponents who undertook confidence-building measures, they hoped to set a peace process in motion from below.
The Northern Irish peace movement disintegrated in the course of 1978. This was due both to internal disagreements and to the spreading of malicious rumors by Catholic and Protestant extremists.
Mairead Corrigan (Nobel Peace Prize 1976)
In August 1976, the Northern Irish secretary Mairead Corrigan’s sister lost three children in a shooting incident in Belfast. She was promptly contacted by a witness, Betty Williams, and they agreed to found a peace organization to bring an end to the bitter conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
Mairead grew up in a poor family in Belfast. In addition to her office job, she devoted a great deal of time in her youth to charity work in the Catholic organization Legion of Mary. That gave her a good basis on which to develop the nonviolent strategy of the Community of Peace People, which brought together thousands of people in protest marches and confidence-building measures among the grass roots in 1976 and 1977.
Mairead Corrigan did not give up hope even when the Peace People lost nearly all their support in the late 1970s. She kept up her local peace work with admirable strength.
Emily Greene Balch (Nobel Peace Prize 1946)
When Emily Greene Balch was given the Peace Prize in 1946 for her lifelong work for disarmament and peace, she received no congratulations from the US government. The official US had long regarded her as a dangerous radical.
The sociologist Balch studied the living conditions of workers, immigrants, minorities and women, and this resulted in her declaring herself a socialist as early as in 1906. During World War I she worked with the 1931 Peace Prize Laureate Jane Addams to persuade the heads of state of neutral countries to intervene to stop the war. When the US entered the war, the anti-war campaigners Addams and Balch were stamped as dangerous dissidents.
In 1935 Emily Greene Balch became leader of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She warned against fascism, and criticised the western democracies for not attempting to stop Hitler’s and Mussolini’s aggressive policies.
Jane Addams (Nobel Peace Prize 1931)
Jane Addams was the second woman to receive the Peace Prize. She founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919, and worked for many years to get the great powers to disarm and conclude peace agreements.
In the USA, Jane Addams worked to help the poor and to stop the use of children as industrial laborers. She ran Hull House in Chicago, a center which helped immigrants in particular.
During World War I, she chaired a women’s conference for peace held in the Hague in the Netherlands, and tried in vain to get President Woodrow Wilson of the USA to mediate peace between the warring countries. When the USA entered the war instead, Jane Addams spoke out loudly against this. She was consequently stamped a dangerous radical and a danger to US security.
Addams was critical of the peace treaty that was forced on Germany in 1919, maintaining that it was so humiliating that it would lead to a German war of revenge. At the end of her life, Jane Addams was honored by the American government for her efforts for peace.
Bertha von Suttner (Nobel Peace Prize 1905)
Baroness Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to be awarded the Peace Prize, wrote one of the nineteenth century’s most influential books, the anti-war novel “Lay Down Your Arms” (1889). The title was provocative to many, but the anti-militaristic message caught on. In the 1870s she became a close friend of Alfred Nobel’s, and they corresponded for years on the subject of peace. The Peace Prize Laureate became one of the leaders of the international peace movement, and in 1891 established the Austrian Peace Society. At the male-dominated peace congresses she stood out as a liberal and forceful leader. At the beginning of the new century she was referred to as the “generalissimo of the peace movement”.
There is little doubt that von Suttner’s friendship with Alfred Nobel had an impact on the contents of his will, and many give her the credit for his establishment of a peace prize. “Inform me, convince me, and then I will do something great for the movement”, Alfred Nobel said to Bertha von Suttner.
So, do you think the next Nobel Prize Winner is reading this piece?
