2011 Nobel Peace Prize Winners Announced

Today, October 7, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize will be split evenly between three activists, “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

The three winners are Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman. According to the Committee, the world cannot hope to obtain democracy and peace for prolonged periods of time if women are not allowed to influence the development of our society just as much as men are.

A poll on the official website for the Nobel Prize shows that 73 percent of people do not believe that women currently have the same rights as men. The three laureates selected this year made great strides towards righting this wrong throughout their lives.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was awarded the prestigious prize because she is the first female president in Africa to be elected democratically. While the leader of Liberia, she took firm measures to ensure that women's position in an otherwise-traditional society are strengthened.

She also promoted peace throughout the war-thorn country, and her policies led to important socio-economic developments that made the country a much safer place to live than before. Her long-term struggle did not escape the members of the Nobel Foundation.

Also based in Liberia, Leymah Gbowee worked long and hard to bring an end to the war, bringing women belonging to different and opposing ethnic and religious groups together, organizing them and giving them a reason to stop fighting.

Both during and after the wars, she contributed a great deal to strengthening the position of women throughout West Africa, helping to remove them from a clearly subordinate status to a more equal footing. Still, a lot of work remains to be done in this regard.

The third winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, Tawakkul Karman, activates in Yemen, where she led women's struggle for equality and democracy before and during the Arab Spring movement swept through the near- and middle-East.

“It is the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s hope that the prize to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman will help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realize the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent,” the official press release reads.