Back in 2009 when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Barack Obama, I winced. I remember thinking on hearing the news: Why burden him so early, a new president with no accomplishment yet but a resonating message of hope and humility and an extended hand, with an honor he will need to justify every day he is in office? But then expert commentators explained that as often as not, the Nobel Peace Prize is an “aspirational” award. Like faith, it is best regarded as “the substance of things hoped for,” a celebration of great things yet to come.
The peace awards this year are as much an act of homage to demonstrated power as they are an act of faith. They celebrate the reservoir of power in women who are not simply breaking traditional molds, but doing so in a way that offers a compelling invitation to others to follow their lead in making their own lives better.
Five women have won the peace prize in the past eight years: Shirin Ebadi of Iran in 2003, Kenya’s Wangari Maathai the following year, and this year, Tawakul Karman of Yemen, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leyman Gbowee, both of Liberia. When Maathai accepted her award in 2004, “the Tree Lady” (who combined tree-planting and sustainable development with a dogged fight for human rights in Kenya), expressed as well as anyone the aspirations the Nobel holds for societies where the sway of political and cultural traditions — what a “good” African woman or a “good” Muslim wife ought not to do — locks people into subservient roles.
“My fellow Africans,” Maathai said, “as we embrace this recognition, let us use it to intensify our commitment to our people, to reduce conflicts and poverty, and thereby improve their quality of life. Let us embrace democratic governance, protect human rights and protect our environment.”
I wish Dr. Maathai, who died of cancer on Sept. 25, had lived just a little bit longer to hear the announcement last week of this year’s winners. I wish she had had time to savor the recognition of three others who are singing the same song about commitment to reducing conflicts and poverty, to good governance, to human rights, to improving their lives.
If I see one bright thread running through the activism of these winners, it is that women have to do for themselves whatever is not happening in their societies to improve life for everyone.
These are not women working in environments that transfer power easily, certainly not from men to women. Impressive about them is a certain fearless disregard for taking on the unconventional and the inevitable fallout. Maathai, for example, had numerous run-ins with Kenyan leaders, including severe beatings. She said the kindest term, probably, that Daniel arap Moi, the former president, had for her was to refer to her as “crazy woman.”
Most of us have watched the Arab Spring with fascination. It has been a revelation, seeing crowds that used to turn out to rain insults on foreign governments turned inward against their own governments in one country after another, men, women and children jostling for space to express their anger.
For most of us, this was a revolution of a few months of furious activity. But not for Tawakul Karman, the 32-year-old Yemeni Muslim, mother and a journalist. She has been at it since 2007, protesting poverty, disease and illiteracy, brutality and violence against women, and a corrupt government and leaders. She has been and continues to organize and lead peaceful protest marches and weekly sit-ins, and she has been sleeping, since mid-February, in a tent at Change Square, the rallying center in the capital, Sana’a. Karman is in an endurance game she is not guaranteed to win.
Of the newest peace laureates, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf perhaps is the best known as Africa’s first elected female head of state,. For the past six years, her challenge has been to pull Liberia out of the ravages of a bloody civil war.
And that war produced the most compelling example, to my mind, of one person tapping into a reserve of cultural power. Leyman Gbowee, the other Liberian laureate, has written about her unconventional approach to peacemaking in wartime in Pray the Devil Back to Hell and Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War. She recounts her experiences organizing women across different religions in prayer sessions and peaceful demonstrations (including withholding sex from their men and threats of stripping naked in public, a taboo in traditional Africa) to press the warring factions to negotiate for peace. When you are in a situation that seems endless, she says, you can’t wait for a Gandhi or a Mandela or anyone. “You are your own Mandela. You are your own Gandhi.” The least we can do is aspire to confront the problems where we live.
Ofobike is Beacon Journal chief editorial writer. She can be reached at 330-996-3513 or by email at lofobike@thebeaconjournal.com
