Your Nobel Peace Prize winners accepted their honors today in Oslo "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work". When I first heard that the award was split between Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman, I was irritated. Why wasn't the significant work of any one of them considered sufficient for solo recognition? Why the three-way split? Something about it seemed diluting to me. There seemed to be an eerie parallel to the broader erasure of women's accomplishments that is part of what they the three of them are fighting against in the first place.
But after simmering on it, and talking it out, I've come to appreciate that this is intended to acknowledge that global nature of the struggle for gender equity; a shared award for a struggle we all share in. And certainly, hearing from all three of these powerful voices only does us good.
Johnson Sirleaf, Gbowee, and Karman spoke of revolutions in their individual Nobel lectures (and all of them, incidentally, ended up citing Martin Luther King, Jr.). Here are excerpts from what they had to say.
Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, one of the key leaders in her country's Arab Spring uprising. Her particularly compelling lecture is available in English, Arabic, and Norwegian.
What Martin Luther King called "the art of living in harmony" is the most important art we need to master today. In order to contribute to that human art, the Arab states should make reconciliation with their own people an essential requirement. This is not merely an internal interest, but also an international one required for the whole human community. The dictator who kills his own people doesn’t only represent a case of violation of his people’s values and their national security, but is also a case of violation of human values, its conventions and its international commitments. Such a case represents a real threat to world peace.
Many nations, including the Arab peoples, have suffered, although they were not at war, but were not at peace either. The peace in which they lived is a false "peace of graves", the peace of submission to tyranny and corruption that impoverishes people and kills their hope for a better future. Today, all of the human community should stand with our people in their peaceful struggle for freedom, dignity and democracy, now that our people have decided to break out of silence and strive to live and realize the meaning of the immortal phrase of Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab, "Since when have you enslaved people, when their mothers had given birth to them as free ones."
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the recently re-elected president of Liberia and the first female head of state in Africa. Her full lecture is available in English, Arabic, and Norwegian.
Although international tribunals have correctly declared that rape, used as a weapon of war, is a crime against humanity, rapes in times of lawlessness continue unabated. The number of our sisters and daughters of all ages brutally defiled over the past two decades staggers the imagination, and the number of lives devastated by such evil defies comprehension.
Through the mutilation of our bodies and the destruction of our ambitions, women and girls have disproportionately paid the price of domestic and international armed conflict. We have paid in the currencies of blood, of tears, and of dignity.
However, the need to defend the rights of women is not limited to the battlefield, and the threats to those rights do not emanate only from armed violence. Girls’ education, seen far too often as an unnecessary indulgence rather than the key investment it is, is still under-funded and under-staffed. Too often girls are discouraged from pursuing an academic training, no matter how promising they may be.
As we celebrate today, we are mindful of the enormous challenges we still face. In too many parts of the world, crimes against women are still under-reported, and the laws protecting women are under-enforced. In this 21st century, surely there is no place for human trafficking that victimizes almost a million people, mostly girls and women, each year. Surely there is no place for girls and women to be beaten and abused. Surely there is no place for a continuing belief that leadership qualities belong to only one gender.
Leymah Gbowee, the grassroots activist of creative nonviolence in Liberia. Her full lecture is available in English, Arabic, and Norwegian.
Women had become the "toy of war" for over-drugged young militias. Sexual abuse and exploitation spared no woman; we were raped and abused regardless of our age, religious or social status. A common scene daily was a mother watching her young one being forcibly recruited or her daughter being taken away as the wife of another drug emboldened fighter.
We used our pains, broken bodies and scarred emotions to confront the injustices and terror of our nation. We were aware that the end of the war will only come through non–violence, as we had all seen that the use of violence was taking us and our beloved country deeper into the abyss of pains, death, and destruction.
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I must be quick to add that this prize is not just in recognition of the triumph of women. It is a triumph of humanity. To recognize and honor women, the other half of humanity, is to achieve universal wholeness and balance. Like the women I met in Congo DRC over a year ago who said "Rape and abuse is the result of larger problem, and that problem is the absence of women in the decision making space". If women were part of decision-making in most societies, there would be less exclusive policies and laws that are blind to abuses women endure.
Related:
- "This Just Seen: 'Pray the Devil Back to Hell'" (in which yours truly makes a brilliant Nobel Peace Prize prediction)
- "An Extraordinary Passing: Wangari Maathai"
- "3 Women's Rights Leaders Accept Nobel Peace Prize" (New York Times)
- "Nobel Peace Prize winner blasts lack of support for Yemen uprising" (Al Arabiya)
Image Credits: Nobel.org
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