Women are at forefront of Arab spring

Women are at forefront of Arab spring

(October 26, 2011) – Women are at the forefront of the Arab spring movement and they are among the main leaders according to Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.

“My beliefs were that men and women alike have to be in this struggle together, and we cannot safeguard our country just with one wing. But I believe that also women can do more than that and can safeguard her country. And this is what the Arab Spring, or Arab revolution, showed,” Karman said in an interview on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.

The Nobel Committee announced the Peace Prize winners on October 7, 2011 which was awarded jointly to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman.

The committee said the three women had been chosen “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”.

Tawakkul Karman is a Yemeni mother of three, journalist and human rights activist.

Karman, 32, also chairs Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC), an organization she founded in 2005 to defend human rights and freedom of expression.

Since 2007 Karman has regularly led demonstrations and sit-ins in Change Square, the focal point for anti-government protests in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.

“The women in the Arab nations were—actually showed its real face. It was not the image that they were showing about the women in our nations. Now our women are the leaders, not only political leaders, but also leaders that lead in every single front, and they are part of the main leaders of the revolution. And therefore, you can see that the rulers are afraid from women,” she said in the interview on Democracy Now.

“We are in one world. We are one nation. And therefore, what’s common in between us, what should be common among us, is love and peace. Martin Luther King says, “I have a dream.” And our peoples have dreams. And we will achieve those dreams.”

On 27 November 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament, giving the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes, the Nobel Prizes.

As described in Nobel’s will, one part was dedicated to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.