Leymah Gbowee

Who is Leymah Gbowee?

Leymah Roberta Gbowee was born in Liberia in 1972 and was seventeen years old, living in Monrovia, when the First Liberian Civil War erupted in 1989. She later trained as a social worker and trauma counselor, earning an associate degree from Mother Patern College of Health Sciences in Monrovia and, subsequently, a master's degree in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. During the Second Liberian Civil War, Gbowee organized and led the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, an interfaith movement that united Christian and Muslim women in nonviolent protest, sit-ins, and a highly publicized sex strike demanding an end to the conflict. In 2003, she led a delegation of women who staged a sit-in and formed a human barricade outside peace talks in Accra, Ghana, refusing to let negotiators, including representatives of President Charles Taylor and rebel factions, leave the hall until an agreement was reached, an action widely credited with helping bring the war to an end that same year. In 2011 she was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkol Karman. She later founded the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa and wrote the memoir "Mighty Be Our Powers" (2011).

Sources: Nobel Prize Committee, "Leymah Gbowee — Biographical" (nobelprize.org) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Leymah Gbowee" · Leymah Gbowee, Mighty Be Our Powers (2011, memoir)