Nobel Peace Prize winners show the way

Gopal Sengupta When the Nobel Prize Committee decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 is to be divided in three equal parts among Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in work for peace; the Committee in its citation observed that 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. If we go through the careers of this year's winners, we find that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state, is known as the "Iron Lady" by her supporters. She was imprisoned in the 1980s for criticising the military regime of Samuel Doe -- and then backed Charles Taylor's rebellion before falling out with him and being charged with treason after he became president. In 2009, Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that she be barred from office for 30 years for her role in backing Mr. Taylor, who is currently on trial for war crimes in the Hague. Despite the popular appeal of her opponent, analysts say she won because of background as a development economist. Mrs Sirleaf, a divorcee whose ex-husband died a few years ago, is the mother of four sons and has six grandchildren. "When the plane hasn't landed yet, don't change the pilots", her posters say. Another prize winner, the 32-year-old mother of three, Tawakkul Karman founded Women Journalists Without Chains in 2005. She has been a prominent activist and advocate of human rights and freedom of expression for the last five years. Speaking to the BBC in April last in Sanaa's Change Square - the heart of the popular demonstrations against Yemen's present regime - Ms Karman said she was astonished at the protests: "I could never imagine this. In Yemen, women are not allowed out of the house after 7:00 pm, now they are sleeping here. This goes beyond the wildest dream I have ever dreamt, I am so proud of our women." She is a member of Yemen's leading Islamist opposition party, the Islah- a conservative, religious movement that calls for reform in accordance with Islamic principles. She has campaigned to raise the minimum age at which women can marry in Yemen. She has been jailed several times for her activism, pilloried in the official media and attacked It has proven that women's empowerment towards spread of democracy and the advancement of poor societies are inextricably linked with women's rights; and peace, too, lies along this road. These points does not need making, but they do, and the Nobel committee's message in awarding the 2011 Peace Prize to three women - two from Liberia and one from Yemen - is very much of the moment. No one knows what season will follow the Arab Spring, or what women's role will be. By giving a share of the Nobel to Tawakkul Karman, just 32 years old, of Yemen, the Nobel committee was making the point that the movement towards democracy needs to involve women. "You cannot achieve welfare and prosperity without taking half of the population on board," the head of the committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, a former president of Norway, told Reuters. He made specific mention of how Islam is used to oppress women in the Arab world. Tawakkul Karman proves that Islam and the liberation of women can be reconciled. Moreover, the prize also recognises the year's most positive development - the emergence of women as activists and leaders in their own right. That the committee should single out this development in the year in which often-peaceful protest movements shook the Arab world is striking. Or, as the title of the memoir of the Liberian peace activist and Nobel Laureate Leyman Gbowee puts it, "Mighty be our powers." The peaceful movement she led of Christian and Muslim women dressed in white shirts helped bring an end to more than a dozen years of war that took 250,000 lives. She helped paving the way for the presidency of the third Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman elected president in Africa, and to several years of stability in that country. What lessons we have learned? Any society that denies women equal opportunities will be left behind. Mighty are their powers - when tapped. Are women key to ending hunger and foolishness!? The Nobel Peace winners have sent a clear message for our hearts and intuition to follow. They somehow know what we truly want to become. Neither have we had to stay hungry and foolish. Gopal Sengupta writes from Canada. He can be reached at email: gopalsengupta@aol.com