A Spotlight on Leymah Gbowee
Written by Tuana Ece Gezer | Edited by Jackie Wang and Adaria Crutcher
Leymah Gbowee was a Liberian peace activist, social worker, and women’s rights advocate who rallied women into pressing the government to end the Liberian Civil War. Her efforts made her a Nobel Prize laureate in 2011. She was born on February 1, 1972, in Central Liberia. She graduated high school at the age of 17, which was when the war broke out. As a result, she was unable to continue her education as she had originally intended. She and her family were forced to flee to the Liberian capital and eventually to a refugee camp in Ghana. In her own words, the war made her go “from a child into an adult in a matter of hours.”
Years later, Gbowee returned to her war-torn country as a mother and a social worker, working with children who had been soldiers in the war. She joined the Women in Peacebuilding Network and became a leader in the organization. Driven by the organization, she organized a group of Christian women whom she mobilized for peace. She collaborated with a Muslim partner to bring both groups of faith together in order to fight for a common cause, which became the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. They have held peaceful anti-war demonstrations, including fasting, praying, and picketing in front of markets and government buildings.
When Leymah was appointed as the spokesperson for WIPNET, she organized protests that boasted thousands of committed participants and eventually forced then-President Charles Taylor to engage in peace talks. Leymah, along with another 200 women, formed a human barricade to make sure the president could not leave until a peace agreement had been reached. When the police attempted to arrest her, she threatened to disrobe; according to traditional belief, this would have brought misfortune, which is why her threat worked. The president ended up resigning and later was exiled. A peace treaty mandating a transitional government was signed. In 2006, she co-founded the Women Peace and Security Network Africa, an organization that provides women with opportunities pertaining to education and leadership.
Her other accomplishments include launching a nonprofit, the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa. Also, Gbowee serves on the Board of Directors of the Nobel Women’s Initiative and is a member of the African Women Leaders Network for Reproductive Health and Family Planning (AWLN). She was named a “Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice” and was honored as a flag bearer during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Games in London. Today, she continues her fight for women’s rights.
McKenna, A. (2023, February 22). Leymah Gbowee. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leymah-Gbowee
Leymah Gbowee . NobelPrize.org. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2023, from https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2011/gbowee/biographical/
