Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia (photo: A. Cruz/ABr.)
Leymah Gbowee
Tawakkul Karman
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 goes to three women, two from Liberia and one from Yemen, for their “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karma. The first two are from Liberia and the third from Yemen.
“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” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its press release about the award. It notes that UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 in 2000, making violence against woman an “international security issue”.
The committee, in announcing the coveted award, described the role of the three, who will share the $100,000 prize in equal parts:
“Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is Africa’s first democratically elected female president. Since her inauguration in 2006, she has contributed to securing peace in Liberia, to promoting economic and social development, and to strengthening the position of women. Leymah Gbowee mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections. She has since worked to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war. 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.”
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 91 times since 1901, with no award in some years. The prize has been shared by three persons on only one other occasion, in 1994, when it was given jointly to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin.
Only 12 of the 97 Nobel Laureats in the past were women.
The prize was awarded in Oslo, Norway. The founder of the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel, was Swedish. In his will, he declared that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded by a Norwegian committee. When Alfred Nobel was alive, Norway and Sweden were united under one monarch, until 1905 when Norway became an independent kingdom.
NAIROBI – Wangari Maathai, the first African woman recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, died after a long struggle with cancer. She was 71.
Maathai’s “compelling life story is inextricably linked with the social and political changes that so much of Africa has been through since the idea of throwing off European colonialism began to gain traction shortly after World War II,” read a BBC commentary published today.
“At first, I was overwhelmed. The Peace Prize is an honor like no other,” said Maathai after being awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I was surprised because I had no idea that anyone was listening. I quickly realized that although I had been given this great honor, the honor was not just for me.
It was also for the thousands of women who planted 30 million trees throughout Kenya as part of the Green Belt Movement. It was also for those who worked to bring back democracy to Kenya through peaceful means, which we did in 2002.”
Maathai said that after learning of the news that she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, she planted a tree in Nyeri, her home region,
Links to: The Green Belt Movement, BBC News
6oth birthday for UNHCR says stateless, displaced are 21st c challenges
The UNHCR has offered the world a magnificent gift as part of its 6oth anniversary: a collection of some of its finest photos showing refugees from around the world, 1950-2010. The complete collection can be viewed on GenevaLunch
Refugees from Kosovo in F.Y.R Macedonia, 1999 (photo ©2010, UNHCR / R LeMoyne)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Sixty years ago today, 14 December 1950, the United Nations General Assembly voted into being a refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, to deal with the refugee situation in Europe in the aftermath of the second world war. It opened its doors in Geneva in January 1951.
Its first major international emergency, taking it beyond the original mandate, came in 1956, as thousands fled when Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian Revolution.
Vietnamese boat people, 1978 (photo ©2010, UNHCR / K Gaugler)
The work of the organization has changed to keep pace with the times: in the 1960s, the decolonization of Africa produced “the first of that continent’s numerous refugee crises needing UNHCR intervention,” the Geneva-based group notes in a statement issued for the anniversary. “Over the following two decades, UNHCR had to help with displacement crises in Asia and Latin America. Today it deals with major displacement situations around the world. The global population of refugees, internally displaced people, and asylum seekers stands at 43 million people, most of them under UNHCR’s duty of care.” The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded twice to the UNHCR, in 1954 and 1981.
Updated 10:00 India has not decided yet whether it will attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony 10 December, according to the Times of India. Some Indian press reports 8 December indicate that the Indian ambassador in Oslo, Norway had confirmed to the Nobel Committee that he would attend, despite strong pressure from China. China has suggested that India’s participation could undermine a visit to India by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao 15 December.
Norway has said that 19 countries have confirmed they will not attend the ceremony this Friday, 10 December, while 44 have confirmed. The United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has also turned down an invitation to attend because she is hosting a human rights event in Geneva Friday, but she will also not be sending a more junior representative, according to Foreign Policy magazine. The Chinese government reacted angrily to news that the prize is being given to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who is in prison for “endangering state security”. Many of Liu’s friends have been prevented from leaving China in recent weeks and his wife has been put under house arrest to prevent her from receiving the prize in his stead.
Links to other sites: Boston Globe, Hindustan Times
Activist’s wife reportedly put under home arrest over weekend
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded 8 October to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights activist “for his long and long-standing non-violent defense of human rights”. His wife, who was allowed by Chinese authorities to travel several hundred miles from Beijing to his prison to share the news with him, was then put under house arrest over the weekend, her lawyer has confirmed to several international media. She has not been charged with a crime, he says.
The former university professor was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power”. In the press conference following the announcement, Committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said that as a great power China had a duty to apply its own consitution to its citizens.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, Norway. The Committee received a total of 237 nominees for this year’s prize, 38 of which were organizations.
The first couple of US environmental politics have split after 40 years of marriage, a “mutual and mutually supportive decision” they said in an e-mail to friends and family, a copy of which was obtained by US web site Politico. Al Gore, former US vice-president under Bill Cllinton, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with Geneva-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Tipper Gore is a photographer noted for her behind-the-scenes White House life shots.
Video, Gore’s Nobel speech
Governments asked Ban Ki-moon and IPCC for external review
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Chair Rajendra Pachauri have asked the InterAcademy Council (IAC), a group of the world’s leading science academies, to review the scientific procedures of the Geneva-based IPCC. IPCC was created in 1986 but came into the limelight in 2007 when it won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with former US Vice-president Al Gore for work on climate change. The group has come under pressure since the news surfaced in recent months that its 2007 report on climate change contained scientific errors which were not caught in the approvals and editing process.
The two men asked for the review after IPCC member governments requested it.
In a statement issued as part of a press conference in New York to announce the review, the IPCC and the Ban’s office stated that:
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva will reopen a debate Thursday 15 October on the conduct of both sides in last winter’s brief war in Gaza, Palestine, between Israel and Hamas, the Gaza strip’s political authority. A report by former South African judge Richard Goldstone suggests both armed groups may have committed war crimes. It recommends that they conduct their own impartial investigations within six months or have the case referred to the International Criminal Court. A call by Libya for the UN in New York to take up the report by strongly rebuffed by Israel which said late Wednesday 14 October that as long as the report is “on the table” there can be no peace negotiations with Palestine.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), the nominal representative of the Palestinians, initially asked for the debate on the report to be deferred, but it came under sharp criticism from Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza strip since elections in 2007 forced out Fatah and the PA.
© Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
© Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
US President Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 2009
Oslo, Norway (GenevaLunch) – US President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” The announcement was made Friday morning 9 October by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The official statement from the committee praises his work to reduce nuclear weapons, in particular:
Lake Geneva
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva is home this week to a key global conference on how the world can adapt to climate change – disasters such as floods and hurricanes, but also the more subtle changes that affect agriculture, tourism and daily life.
The conference agenda is wide-ranging and includes improvements to early warning systems for disasters and how to provide more precise and more localized weather forecasting, needed by developing countries as well as industries in the developed world.
The meeting is hosted by Switzerland and organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and a group of partners.
North Korea has once again opened some areas to South Korean tourists, agreed to help reunite families and to provide access again to an industrial park, in the continuing dance between rapprochement and keeping a distance. South Korea remained wary, saying the agreements were on a civil and not at a government level. The news came on Monday, just a day before the death in Seoul of Kim Dae-jung, 85, former president of the South who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his efforts to create better ties between the two countries. JoongAng Daily, Reuters
