TAWAKKOL KARMAN, co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize 2011.
Presented by CIPS and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
Video of the event:
Tawakkol Karman was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 in recognition of her nonviolent struggle for peace and women’s rights. Of Karman, the Nobel Committee said: ‘In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the ‘Arab spring’, Tawakkul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.” She is the first Yemeni and the first Arab woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, as well as being the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate to date, at the age of 32. In 2005, she founded the organization Women Journalists Without Chains, (WJWC) which advocates for rights and freedoms of journalists. In 2007, she began organizing weekly protests in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, targeting systemic government repression and calling for inquiries into corruption and other forms of social and legal injustice. The weekly protests continued until 2011, when she redirected protesters to support the Arab Spring, culminating in late 2012 with the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, after 33 years in power. Karman was imprisoned on a number of occasions for her pro-democracy and pro-human rights protests. Many in Yemen call her the “mother of the revolution”. As well as being a human rights activist and journalist, she is a mother of three and a politician.