NIGERIA: Leymah Gbowee, one of the three 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipients will receive her award at a ceremony in Norway over the weekend

Record ID: 235381

  • Title: NIGERIA: Leymah Gbowee, one of the three 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipients will receive her award at a ceremony in Norway over the weekend
  • Date: 7th December 2011
  • Summary: LAGOS, NIGERIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) NOBEL LAUREATE LEYMAH GBOWEE SAYING: "When you have gotten to a place in your life where you see no future for yourself or your children and you see that there are a few people manipulating your destiny, you have to step up to the plate."
  • Embargoed: 22nd December 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria, Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA9L9LQMAM06K412S9POALIY1O4
  • Story Text: Ever since Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee received the news that she had won the Nobel peace prize in October this year, the reality of it all has not fully settled in.
    Gbowee, 39, along with Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Yemen's Tawakul Karman will receive their awards at a ceremony in Norway over the weekend.
    Gbowee was awarded the prize for her work mobilising women across ethnic and religious divides to help bring an end to the war in Liberia and to ensure women's participation in elections.
    She recently spoke to Reuters in Lagos, Nigeria, where she was giving a public lecture about the power of youth to make a difference in crisis situations.
    "It was a feeling of total disbelief for someone who have done community based work, just done this work because of her passion and not because she expected or anticipated any global local or national award, it was a shock and I think it's still going to be a while for me to get used to it, I am still trying to get used to all of this attention," Gbowee said.
    Her Women For Peace movement is credited by some for helping end the 1989-2003 civil war. Starting with prayers and songs at a fish market, she also urged the wives and girlfriends of leaders of the warring factions to deny them sex until they laid down their arms.
    She is the subject of an award-winning documentary film "Pray the Devil Back to Hell," which documents the story of the female peace activists in Liberia who helped end the war in which more than 200,000 people were killed.
    "When you have gotten to a place in your life where you see no future for yourself or your children and you see that there are a few people manipulating your destiny, you have to step up to the plate," the mother-of-six said.
    Since 2006, Gbowee has been executive director of Women in Peace and Security Network - Africa, an organisation that works with women in Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Sierra Leone to promote peace, literacy, and politics.
    From her experiences she says Africa needs selfless leaders and equitable distribution of opportunities. "Africa has a long way to go to obtain peace. We have a lot of resources. Until we are able to get to the place where some of the gaps, the disparities between the rich and the poor are covered we will continue to have issues of conflict, that's one. The second thing that until we have leaders who will put their people's interests first above their own interests, we will continue to have problems."
    The Nobel committee said the three winners were rewarded from the bequest left by Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel for "their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work".
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