Three women, two Liberians and a Yemeni, win Nobel Peace Prize

Reporting from Cairo and Johannesburg, South —  Three women from Africa and the Middle East who symbolize nonviolent struggles to improve their nations and advance the role of women’s rights were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Sharing the award were Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state; her countrywoman Leymah Gbowee, a peace activist who challenged warlords; and Tawakul Karman, a Yemeni human rights leader seeking to overthrow an autocratic regime as part of the regionwide “Arab Spring” movement.

“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,” said the citation read by Thorbjorn Jagland, head of the Nobel committee, based in Oslo.

The Norwegian panel said it hoped the award would help end “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 trio joined an exclusive group of about a dozen female Nobel peace laureates among the scores of men who have won the honor over the decades.

Gbowee’s associates have termed her a “warrior” for peace, and both Karman and Johnson-Sirleaf, who is facing a reelection vote Tuesday, have been nicknamed the “Iron Lady” in their countries.

There was “a lot of dancing and whooping and hollering” in Liberia’s presidential office, a Johnson-Sirleaf aide said, after the 72-year-old Harvard-educated economist heard the news.

Johnson-Sirleaf said that she was humbled by the prize, but that the credit went to the people of Liberia,

“We were really happy because it was a real surprise for us,” Elva Richardson, Johnson-Sirleaf’s personal administrative assistant, said in a phone interview. “We are conveying to [Liberian women] that this is a celebration, a prize for all Liberian women. They’re ecstatic.”

The citation said that since becoming president in 2006, Johnson-Sirleaf had helped secure peace in Liberia, had promoted economic and social development and had strengthened the position of women.

But Johnson-Sirleaf’s opponents reacted angrily at what they saw as interference in Liberia’s domestic affairs.

Johnson-Sirleaf’s main rival in the presidential election, Winston Tubman, described her as a warmonger who didn’t deserve the prize. He told Agence France-Presse that its timing was provocative.

“I did more to stop the war than she did,” Tubman told the BBC, referring to Liberia’s 14-year civil war, which began in 1989.

Speaking to reporters in the Norwegian capital, Jagland rejected suggestions that the prize could have an effect on the election.

Johnson-Sirleaf has won previous international plaudits for her governance: The Economist said she was arguably the best president Liberia had ever had, and Newsweek named her one of the 10 best leaders in the world in 2010.

But she has faced criticism in Liberia for going back on a promise not to run for a second term, and for her initial support of Charles Taylor in 1989, when civil war broke out against the autocratic rule of Samuel Doe, who had jailed her. Once assuming power herself, Johnson-Sirleaf requested Taylor’s extradition from Nigeria so that he could face trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone.

Gbowee, 39, was reportedly close to tears when she learned of the award while in New York.

“I’m numb, I’m fuzzy, I’m overwhelmed. All I keep hearing in my head is the song of praise to God,” she told Reuters news agency. “My work is for survival for myself and for other women. With or without a Nobel, I will still do what I do because I am a symbol of hope in my community on the continent, in a place where there is little to be hopeful for.”

Gbowee, who now works for the Accra, Ghana-based Women Peace and Security Network Africa, played a key role in ending the Liberian war by forming a group of Christian and Muslim women who held daily protests, demanding that Taylor hold serious peace talks. At one point, the women organized a “sex strike” to underscore their anger about continuing violence.

“We didn’t have the power to go to peace talks, so we just thought, what else do we have to lose?” she told National Public Radio in 2009. “Our bodies are their battlefield. Let’s just put our bodies out there, because it was just about at that point in time, all of us, the mind-set was we need to do something to change the situation if our children must live in this country.”

The committee’s selection of Karman, a journalist and longtime human rights activist, is a nod to the democratic revolutions that have swept North Africa and the Middle East since early in the year. Karman has organized antigovernment protests against Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and in 2005 founded Women Journalists Without Chains to demand wider freedom of expression.

“I am very, very happy about this prize,” Karman told the Associated Press. “I give the prize to the youth of revolution in Yemen and the Yemeni people.”

Karman, 32, has inspired youth rallies for civil rights and economic opportunities in an impoverished, conservative Muslim nation. She has also often criticized religious extremists, including those in the opposition Islamic party Islah.

Karman stunned many in the country when she removed her face veil during a human rights conference in 2004.

When peaceful sit-ins started in Yemen in January, Karman was among the thousands who began camping out in a tent city near Sana University in the capital.

“This prize is recognition that the international community recognizes the Yemen revolution,” Karman said Friday. “My winning of the Nobel is a victory for the martyrs and the injured of the youth revolution.”

Her activism and protests have agitated Saleh’s teetering government, which has refused to grant Women Journalists Without Chains a license to start a newspaper. The Ministry of Information blocked Karman from sending out SMS bulletins on human rights.

The many activists in the still-unfinished revolutions in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and other countries complicated the Nobel committee’s efforts to award the prize to one person who would symbolize the effect that youths and social media have had on inspiring the uprisings.

In announcing the award, Jagland said of Karman, “Many years before the revolutions started she stood up against one of the most authoritarian and autocratic regimes in the world.”

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

Times staff writers Fleishman and Dixon reported from Cairo and Johannesburg, South Africa, respectively. Special correspondent Zaid al-Aalayaa in Sana, Yemen, contributed to this report.