LEYMAH GBOWEE

“WOMAN FOR PEACE” Award

Leymah Gbowee, that is the woman who defeated the war.

She was born in Liberia but she studied abroad, since she was very young, just returned to her country from the United States where she attended the University, her life was dominated and twisted by the civil war because of the President Charles Taylor’s totalitarian system.

A long and bloody conflict that deprived her of her relatives, friends but also her dreams and chances.

Mother of six children included an adopted and wife of a violent man, she has decided to devote her life to humanitarian activities in favour of peace.

She has founded the Association Women in Peace building Network with another Liberian activist, the women network to build peace, an essential movement to solve the conflict, paving the way to the first woman President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf who is still in office.

Her initiatives for the process of peace in Liberia have been all nonviolent initiatives and Leymah made up of them all, even the sex strike towards their husband where Muslim and Christian women has come to an agreement.

In 2011, she won the Nobel Prize precisely for her continued and nonviolent commitment in order to have promoted and realized the process of peace in her country.