3 Women Accept Nobel Peace Prize

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman honored
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 10, 2011 9:20 AM CST
3 Women Accept Nobel Peace Prize
Human rights activist Tawakkol Karman of Yemen.   (AP Photo/John McConnico)

Three women who fought injustice, dictatorship, and sexual violence in Liberia and Yemen accepted the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize today, calling on repressed women worldwide to rise up against male supremacy. "My sisters, my daughters, my friends—find your voice," Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said after collecting her Nobel diploma and medal at a ceremony in Oslo.

Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female president, shared the award with women's rights campaigner Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia—"We used our pains, broken bodies and scarred emotions to confront the injustices and terror of our nation"—and Tawakkul Karman, a female icon of the protest movement in Yemen. "This should haunt the world's conscience because it challenges the very idea of fairness and justice," she said. Karman is first Arab woman to win the prize and at 32 the youngest peace laureate ever. (More Nobel Peace Prize stories.)

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