EXAM RESULTS

 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Three Remarkable Women of 2011..

 

For Peace, Democracy, and Rights

Oct. 7, 2011 -- Yemeni opposition leader Tawakul Karman, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize today for their efforts in Yemen and Liberia.
Women in the Middle East, like the three recipients, are more socially active now [especially in the protests that have swept across the region], but conservatives have tried to keep them out of the spotlight. The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose to award these three leaders to cast light on women's rights in the Middle East. The committee described the prize as a call to women all over 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."
Continue reading to learn more about Karman, Johnson Sirleaf, and Gbowee.

 

Tawakul Karman

Tawakul Karman, born Feb. 7, 1979, in Mekhlaf, Ta'izz province, Yemen, is a journalist, politician, and human rights activist who co-founded Women Journalists Without Chains in 2005. She is known for her role in the protests for the freedom of press and her organized sit-ins and protests in Tahrir Square, the Arab Spring uprising, and the 2011 Yemeni uprisings.
Karman has been called the "Iron Woman" and "Mother of the Revolution" by Yemenis. She is the first Arab woman, the first Yemeni, and second Muslim to win a Nobel Prize.

 

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, born Oct. 29, 1938, in Monrovia, is the 24th and current president of Liberia. She has been in office since Jan. 16, 2006. Johnson Sirleaf secured an education in Monrovia and in the United States before returning to Liberia to work under the government of William Tolbert. She served as Assistant Minister of Finance and Minister of Finance under Tolbert's administration, but she fled the country after President Tolbert was assassinated and Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, a member of the indigenous Krahn ethnic group, took over the government.
She is known for speaking publicly against the Doe regime [and being imprisoned for it]; the executive order to make education free and obligatory for all elementary school-aged children; the Freedom of Information bill [like the US Sunshine Laws]; and her efforts in Liberia's debt relief. Johnson Sirleaf is the first [and only] woman to be elected to lead a country in Africa.

 

Leymah Gbowee

Leymah Gbowee, born 1972 in Liberia, is a peace activist in Africa known for her peaceful movement which ended the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. After the end of the civil war, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected president.
During the civil war, Gbowee worked with trauma victims, and she realized mothers had the power to bring change to the current terrorized society. In 2002 she organized Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, a peaceful movement aimed at ending the Second Liberian Civil War. Women, of Christian and Islamic faiths, sang, prayed, held peaceful nonviolent protests, and went on a sex strike. 
With the help of another activist, Comfort Freeman, Gbowee organized Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), and all the women in the peaceful protests were able to end the 14-year civil war in Liberia.