Nobel Peace Prize 2011: Women's Non-Violent Struggle for Peace

This note covers the Nobel Peace Prize 2011: why the Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, who these three women are and what each of them did, the background of civil war in Liberia and the Arab Spring in Yemen, how their work on women's rights and peace-building unfolded, why the prize matters, and quick facts for exams.

What was the Nobel Peace Prize 2011 awarded for?

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was given jointly to three women "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work".

This is the exact wording, called the citation, used by the Norwegian Nobel Committee when it announced the prize on 7 October 2011.

In plain words, the committee was saying something simple but important: wars and conflicts hurt women in particular ways, especially through violence and rape, yet women are usually left out of the talks that end wars and decide how peace is built.

The three laureates were recognised because each of them, in her own country, had worked without using violence to protect women during conflict and to get women a proper seat at the table when peace was being negotiated.

The committee also stated its general belief that lasting peace and real democracy cannot happen unless women get the same chance as men to shape decisions in society.

Who are the laureates?

The prize money of 10,000,000 Swedish kronor was split into three equal shares, one third each, between the three women named below. Two are from Liberia in West Africa and one is from Yemen.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born on 29 October 1938 in Monrovia, Liberia, and was resident in Liberia at the time of the award. She held a one-third share of the prize.

She had become Africa's first democratically elected female president after winning the Liberian presidential election of 2005 and taking office in 2006.

According to the press release, since her inauguration she had contributed to securing peace in Liberia, promoting economic and social development, and strengthening the position of women in the country.

Leymah Gbowee

Leymah Gbowee was born on 1 February 1972 in Monrovia, Liberia, and was also resident in Liberia at the time of the award, holding a one-third share.

She had trained as a trauma specialist to help care for traumatised child soldiers during Liberia's civil war.

She later organised a grass-roots women's movement that brought together Christian and Muslim women to press for peace, and she went on to mobilise women across West Africa for peace work after the war ended.

Tawakkol Karman

Tawakkol Karman was born on 7 February 1979 in Ta'izz, Yemen, and was resident in Yemen at the time of the award, holding a one-third share.

A journalist by training, she had founded an organisation defending press freedom and had led peaceful demonstrations for democracy and women's rights in Yemen, including during the protests of 2011 known as the Arab Spring.

The Nobel facts page describes her as the first woman from the Arab world to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

What was the situation in Liberia and Yemen before the prize?

The background to this prize lies in two very different conflicts, linked by a common problem: women bearing the worst of wartime violence while having almost no voice in ending it.

Civil war broke out in Liberia in 1989, and fighting under warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor continued for years, bringing widespread suffering, including to civilians and child soldiers. The presentation speech noted that modern wars tend to kill mostly civilians, and that a very large share of these victims are women and children, even though men do most of the actual fighting.

Rape has long been one of the horrors of war, and the committee chairman's speech pointed out that in conflicts such as those in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Darfur, Rwanda and Congo, rape had become a deliberate tactic of war, used to break the morale of an enemy population, force people to flee and punish opponents even after fighting ended. The speech noted that such acts had been defined as crimes against humanity and war crimes, first by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and later by the International Criminal Court.

In October 2000, the UN Security Council had adopted Resolution 1325, which for the first time made violence against women in armed conflict an international security issue and underlined the need for women to take part in peace processes on an equal footing with men. The presentation speech said this resolution's aims were later developed further in four more Security Council resolutions, numbered 1820, 1888, 1889 and 1960.

The presentation speech noted that, even years later, in surveyed peace negotiations fewer than 8 per cent of participants and fewer than 3 per cent of signatories to peace agreements were women, and that no woman had ever been appointed chief negotiator in a UN-led peace negotiation.

In Yemen, the situation of women was described in the presentation speech as among the most difficult in the world, with the country said to have made the least progress on women's rights of any country.

Tawakkol Karman had been active as a youth and women's rights activist for years before 2011, campaigning against the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh well before protests spread across the Arab world that year. The speech mentioned that she kept pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Hillary Clinton in her home as figures she admired.

What did each laureate actually do?

Each laureate's contribution took a different practical form, but all rested on non-violent methods: organising, speaking out, protesting peacefully and building networks across lines that usually divided people.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had been imprisoned and threatened with rape before going into exile in 1980.

She later worked for several years as Director of the UNDP's Regional Bureau for Africa and served as one of seven eminent persons who investigated the Rwandan genocide on behalf of the Organization of African Unity.

When civil war broke out in Liberia in 1989, Sirleaf initially supported Charles Taylor, hoping he might provide a solution, but she gradually distanced herself from him and ran against him, unsuccessfully, in the 1997 presidential election. In 2005 she won a convincing victory, becoming the first democratically elected female head of state on the African continent.

Under her presidency, according to the presentation speech, the civil war ended, democracy functioned, there was considerable economic growth, the very widespread corruption was somewhat reduced, women's education and participation improved, and the previously monstrous number of rapes diminished, although Liberia remained one of the poorest countries in the world.

Leymah Gbowee, after her trauma-therapy training to help traumatised child soldiers, mobilised a network of over 2,000 women across 15 provinces in 2002, organised as the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. They dressed in white and protested near Monrovia's fish market.

She united women from different religious and ethnic backgrounds. During peace negotiations in Ghana, the women reportedly shut the male negotiators in a room and threatened to strip naked, a protest that, in a country where such an act would bring disgrace on the men, pushed the talks forward.

This pressure helped bring Charles Taylor to sign a peace agreement in 2003. Gbowee then helped mobilise Liberian women to vote for Sirleaf in 2005, a support the committee called a crucial factor in the election victory. She founded the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), which worked on Liberia and other parts of West Africa, and later headed the Women Peace and Security Network Africa (WIPSEN) from Accra, Ghana. In 2008 she also featured in the documentary film "Pray the Devil Back to Hell", about women's struggle during the Liberian civil war.

Tawakkol Karman founded the organisation Women Journalists Without Chains and organised peaceful sit-ins and information campaigns, training other women to join the struggle.

She campaigned for democracy, women's rights and tolerance, including understanding between Shia and Sunni Muslims and between Islam and other faiths, and was imprisoned and exposed to serious threats for her activism.

In 2011 she was one of the leaders of the protests on Change Square in Sana'a against President Saleh. The presentation speech noted that, in a country where most women wore the niqab, Karman herself wore the hijab while remaining a member of an Islamic party, a comparison drawn on the Nobel facts page, which likened her stance to that of Iranian laureate Shirin Ebadi, who had also argued that Islam is no obstacle to women's full participation in society.

What did the Norwegian Nobel Committee say?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which chooses the Peace Prize laureates each year, explained its reasoning in the press release issued in Oslo on 7 October 2011. It said the committee hoped the award would help "bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries".

The committee framed its choice around UN Security Council Resolution 1325, saying that resolution had made violence against women in conflict an international security matter and had called for women to take part equally in peacemaking. It also quoted the committee's own words: "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."

The presentation speech, delivered by committee chairman Thorbjørn Jagland on 10 December 2011, added that later Security Council resolutions 1820, 1888, 1889 and 1960 had developed these goals further, and said these resolutions deserved a prominent place on the desk of every head of state.

The speech also drew a broader point using the example of bicycles newly arriving in poor rural districts: women who till the soil, carry goods to market and get children to school rarely got to use the bicycle, which instead usually went to the male member of the family. It argued that help given to women tended to benefit the whole family, while help given to men too often benefited only the man himself, and that investing in girls' education was probably the best investment any developing country could make.

The speech warned that leaders in Yemen and Syria who used violence against their own people could not, in the long run, resist the demand for freedom and human rights, comparing this to the wind of history that had earlier brought down the Berlin Wall. It closed by quoting the American writer and civil rights advocate James Baldwin: "The people that once walked in darkness are no longer prepared to do so."

How did the work develop?

The table below sets out the main stages, from Liberia's civil war through to the Arab Spring and the award itself, as described in the Nobel pages.

Why does it matter?

The 2011 Peace Prize mattered for more than one reason. It placed the United Nations' framework on women, peace and security, built around Resolution 1325, firmly in global attention, at a time when the presentation speech noted that women remained a very small share of participants and signatories in peace negotiations.

It also connected two very different settings, post-war West Africa and the Arab Spring in the Middle East, to a shared argument: that non-violent organising by women could change outcomes that seemed stuck, whether ending a civil war in Liberia or challenging an authoritarian government in Yemen.

Tawakkol Karman's award made her, according to the Nobel facts page, the first woman from the Arab world to receive the Peace Prize, and the presentation speech noted she was, at 32, the youngest Peace Prize laureate up to that time.

The committee's hope, stated plainly in its press release, was that the prize would help end the suppression of women still found in many countries and help realise what it called the potential for democracy and peace that women represent.

The speech left open how far this hope would be met, noting that Liberia remained one of the poorest countries in the world even as progress had been made since 2006.

Why did the committee link safety and participation together?

The 2011 citation joined two ideas that are often treated separately: keeping women safe from violence in conflict, and giving women a real voice in peace-building once conflict ends or while it is still going on.

The presentation speech explained why these two ideas belong together. It argued that women are too often seen only as victims of war, when in the committee's view they must also be able to become active players who help create peace rather than simply enduring it.

The speech used the three laureates as proof that this shift is possible. Sirleaf moved from being a victim of imprisonment and threatened rape in Liberia to becoming the person who, as president, oversaw a fall in the country's very high rape numbers. Gbowee moved from treating the psychological wounds of child soldiers to leading the protests that pressured a sitting president to sign a peace agreement. Karman moved from working as a journalist to becoming one of the leading figures on Change Square during Yemen's 2011 protests.

The speech also stressed that the fight is not finished. It noted that in surveyed peace negotiations, fewer than 8 per cent of participants and fewer than 3 per cent of signatories were women, and that no woman had ever been appointed chief negotiator in a UN-led peace negotiation, figures the committee used to show how far the goals of Resolution 1325 still had to travel even a decade after its adoption.

By honouring three women from two very different countries with the same citation, the award illustrated that the problem of excluding women from peace-building was not confined to one region, one religion or one kind of conflict, but was a pattern repeated across post-war Liberia and the Arab Spring in Yemen alike.

Quick facts for exams

The Nobel Peace Prize 2011 was awarded jointly to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee on 7 October 2011.

Each received a one-third share of the prize, worth 10,000,000 Swedish kronor in total. The citation honoured their "non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work".

Sirleaf was Africa's first elected female president, from Liberia; Gbowee organised women's peace protests during Liberia's civil war; Karman led peaceful pro-democracy protests in Yemen during the Arab Spring and was the first Arab woman to win the prize. The award ceremony took place in Oslo on 10 December 2011.

Note: Source. The prize facts in this note are from the Nobel Prize's official site, nobelprize.org.

Glossary

• Nobel Peace Prize — an annual award given for work promoting peace, decided by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
• Norwegian Nobel Committee — the body in Oslo that selects the Peace Prize laureates each year.
• Citation — the official short sentence explaining why a laureate was chosen.
• Non-violent struggle — working for change through protest, persuasion and organising, without using force.
• Peace-building — work done to help a country move from conflict to lasting peace and stable institutions.
• UN Security Council Resolution 1325 — a 2000 resolution making violence against women in conflict a security issue and calling for women's equal role in peace processes.
• Arab Spring — the wave of pro-democracy protests across several Arab countries beginning in 2011.
• Civil war — armed conflict between groups within the same country.
• Trauma therapy — treatment to help people, including former child soldiers, cope with the psychological effects of violence.
• Niqab/hijab — forms of head or face covering worn by some Muslim women, mentioned in relation to Karman's own choice of dress.
• WIPNET — the Women in Peacebuilding Network, founded by Leymah Gbowee.
• Sit-in — a peaceful protest where people occupy a place and refuse to leave until their demands are addressed.
• Laureate — a person who has won a Nobel Prize.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: All three laureates are from the same country. Correct: Sirleaf and Gbowee are from Liberia, while Karman is from Yemen.
• Misconception: The prize was for armed resistance against oppression. Correct: The citation specifically honours a non-violent struggle.
• Misconception: Sirleaf was only Liberia's first female president, nothing more. Correct: She was also Africa's first democratically elected female head of state.
• Misconception: Gbowee's protests were only about ending the war. Correct: She also worked to secure women's participation in the subsequent elections and in peace-building across West Africa.
• Misconception: Karman rejected all religious dress as part of her activism. Correct: She wore the hijab rather than the more common niqab, while remaining a member of an Islamic party.
• Misconception: The prize money was unevenly split favouring one laureate. Correct: Each of the three laureates received an equal, one-third share.
• Misconception: Resolution 1325 was adopted because of this prize. Correct: The resolution was adopted in 2000, over a decade before the 2011 prize, and the prize built on its goals.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. In which year was the Nobel Peace Prize 2011 announced? [1 mark]

1. It was announced on 7 October 2011 by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Q2. Name the three laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize 2011. [2 marks]

1. The laureates were Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, both of Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, each receiving a one-third share of the prize.

Q3. Explain what UN Security Council Resolution 1325 established and why the Norwegian Nobel Committee referred to it. [4 marks]

1. Resolution 1325, adopted in October 2000, made violence against women in armed conflict an international security issue for the first time.
2. It underlined the need for women to take part as equals with men in peace processes and peace work generally.
3. The Norwegian Nobel Committee referred to it because the 2011 laureates had worked precisely on protecting women in conflict and widening their role in peace-building, matching the resolution's goals.
4. The committee's press release and presentation speech both framed the award as support for these UN goals.

Q4. Describe the main contribution of Leymah Gbowee that led to her share of the 2011 Peace Prize. [4 marks]

1. Gbowee trained as a trauma specialist to help traumatised child soldiers during Liberia's civil war.
2. In 2002 she organised the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, uniting Christian and Muslim women across ethnic lines.
3. Their sustained, non-violent protests, including pressure during peace talks in Ghana, helped push Charles Taylor to sign a peace agreement in 2003.
4. She later mobilised women to vote in the 2005 election and founded networks promoting women's role in peace-building across West Africa.

Q5. Discuss, with reference to the three laureates, why the Norwegian Nobel Committee linked women's safety and women's participation in peace-building in its 2011 citation. [6 marks]

1. The committee's citation honoured the laureates "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work", joining two ideas: protection from violence and a real voice in peacemaking.
2. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf showed this by becoming Africa's first elected female president, using her office to help end Liberia's civil war, reduce rape and strengthen women's position in society.
3. Leymah Gbowee showed it through grass-roots organising, bringing women of different faiths together to pressure an end to violence and then helping get a woman elected president.
4. Tawakkol Karman showed it in Yemen by campaigning peacefully against an authoritarian government for democracy, women's rights and religious tolerance during the Arab Spring, at real personal risk including imprisonment.
5. The committee's press release stated that democracy and lasting peace could not be achieved unless women gained the same opportunities as men to influence society, and its presentation speech noted how few women took part in peace negotiations worldwide.
6. Taken together, the three cases illustrated the committee's broader point that women are not only victims of conflict but can be central, non-violent agents of peace when given the chance to act.

Q6. What specific fact distinguished Tawakkol Karman within the history of the Peace Prize at the time of her award? [2 marks]

1. She was the first woman from the Arab world to win the Nobel Peace Prize and, at 32, the youngest laureate in the prize's history up to that point.

Key takeaways

• The Nobel Peace Prize 2011 was shared equally among Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman.
• The citation honoured their non-violent struggle for women's safety and for women's full participation in peace-building.
• Sirleaf and Gbowee worked in Liberia; Karman worked in Yemen, including during the Arab Spring.
• The award was linked to UN Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, on women, peace and security.
• Gbowee's cross-religious women's protests helped bring Charles Taylor to sign a 2003 peace agreement in Liberia.
• Sirleaf became Africa's first democratically elected female president, taking office in 2006.
• Karman was the first Arab woman, and at the time the youngest person, to win the Peace Prize.
• The committee said democracy and lasting peace need equal opportunities for women to influence society.

Test yourself

Where was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf born?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born on 29 October 1938 in Monrovia, Liberia, according to the Nobel Prize facts page.

What organisation did Leymah Gbowee found to campaign for peace?

Leymah Gbowee founded the Women in Peacebuilding Network, known as WIPNET, to promote women's role in peace-building across West Africa.

What was Tawakkol Karman's profession before her activism became widely known?

Tawakkol Karman worked as a journalist and founded the organisation Women Journalists Without Chains in Yemen.

What did UN Security Council Resolution 1325 do?

Adopted in October 2000, it made violence against women in armed conflict an international security issue and called for equal participation of women in peace processes.

How did Gbowee's protests help end Liberia's civil war?

She organised Christian and Muslim women to protest peacefully, and pressure during the 2003 Ghana peace talks helped push Charles Taylor to sign a peace agreement.

What distinguished Tawakkol Karman among Peace Prize laureates in 2011?

She was the first woman from the Arab world to win the Nobel Peace Prize and, at 32, the youngest laureate in its history at the time.

What did the Norwegian Nobel Committee hope the 2011 prize would achieve?

It hoped the prize would help bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, as stated in its press release.