2011 Nobel Prize Laureates

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/press.html
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 is to be divided in three equal parts between 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 peace-building work. 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.

In October 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325. The resolution for the first time made violence against women in armed conflict an international security issue. It underlined the need for women to become participants on an equal footing with men in peace processes and in peace work in general.

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.

It is the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s hope that the prize to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman will help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realise the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.

Oslo, October 7, 2011

See the new issue of Infactis Pax. Online Journal of Peace Education and Social Justice

Visit the new issue of infactispax.org and see the ongoing dialogue between Nobel Nominated peace educator Betty Reardon and Well-known peace scholar Dale Snauwaert


"In a recent publication entitled ”Concerns, Cautions and Possibilities for Peace Education for Political Efficacy” Betty Reardon reflects on the state of peace education and offers a brilliant reaffirmation and further elaboration of the central importance and nature of a pedagogy of reflective inquiry for a comprehensive/critical peace education. Betty Reardon is an internationally renowned peace scholar and peace educator. She has been instrumental in the establishment of peace education institutions and programs around the world. Her work has defined the fields of peace studies and peace education (Reardon and Snauwaert, p.1)...

Reardon’s Responses to Snauwaert’s Queries on Reflective Inquiry
Dale Snauwaert has offered an excellent and incisive encapsulation of my
proposals for reflective inquiry as an appropriate and effective pedagogy through which to pursue the political/social purposes of comprehensive critical peace education. This encapsulation prefaces some very significant challenges for the further explication and development of the proposals and arguments put forward in ”Concerns, Cautions and Possibilities for Peace Education for Political Efficacy”. Snauwaert, an education philosopher has been a ground-breaker in articulating the moral and ethical dimensions of peace education and has situated the field within the philosophy of cosmopolitanism. His reflections deepening the inquiry into these dimensions offer a particularly provocative extension of the discussion I sought to open about current problems and possibilities in the pedagogies of peace education (Reardon and Snauwaert,p.6)".

visit www.infactispax.org to see the entirety of this conversation