HRF congratulates Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Liberia's Leymah Gbowee

OSLO, Norway (October 7, 2011) – This morning Liberian human rights activist Leymah Gbowee, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Yemeni activist Tawakkul Karman were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for their non-violent struggle for human rights and peace-building work.

This past May, Gbowee was a speaker at the Human Rights Foundation’s 2011 Oslo Freedom Forum. Gbowee created a movement in Liberia to end civil war, the use of child soldiers, and the rape and abuse of women. Fed up with violence, she met with Christian and Muslim women across her country and organized a sex strike, during which Liberian women refused to have relations with men. As a result of the strike, Charles Taylor agreed to meet Gbowee, and promised to attend peace talks in Ghana. Under her leadership, women banded together at the site of the peace talks and refused to leave until an agreement was reached. Their determination resulted in Charles Taylor’s exile, the end of the Second Liberian Civil War, and the election of Sirleaf, Africa’s first female head of state.

“We are delighted that the Nobel committee continues to underline the struggle for individual rights and human dignity as a keystone to any meaningful peace. As with the selection last year of Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, who continues to languish in prison, this year's award sounds the alarm over the lack of fundamental freedoms in closed societies and strongman regimes," said HRF president Thor Halvorssen.

“The road to freedom is long, the cost of freedom is high, the fight for freedom is not for the faint-hearted and the pessimists,” said Gbowee during her speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum. Today she continues her mission in Liberia, serving as executive director of Women Peace and Security Network Africa.

Gbowee was one of 40 speakers at HRF’s third annual Oslo Freedom Forum, along with Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni, Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, Egyptian entrepreneur Wael Ghonim, former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, Chinese scholar-dissident Yang Jianli, American Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, and numerous others. Each year the Oslo Freedom Forum unites leaders from academia, advocacy, business, media, politics, social entrepreneurship, and technology to address the world’s most challenging humanitarian issues. Our objectives are to expose unfree and closed societies, establish a human rights axis for journalists, inspire action through the exchange of ideas, build a vibrant international community, raise human rights to the top of the world agenda, spotlight the work of activists and innovators, and network participants with allies and supporters.

HRF is a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that protects and promotes human rights globally, with an expertise in the Americas. We believe that all human beings are entitled to freedom of self-determination, freedom from tyranny, the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries; HRF’s ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. HRF does not support nor condone violence. HRF’s International Council includes former prisoners of conscience Vladimir Bukovsky, Palden Gyatso, Václav Havel, Mutabar Tadjibaeva, Ramón J. Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu.

Contact: Thor Halvorssen, Human Rights Foundation, (212) 246.8486, info@thehrf.org

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