Leymah Roberta Gbowee (b. 1972) is an African peace activist responsible for organising a peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. This led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation with a female president. She, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkul Karman, were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize ”for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”. Leymah Gbowee was born in central Liberia. At the age of 17, she moved to Monrovia, when the First Liberian Civil War erupted. She trained as a trauma counselor during the civil war in Liberia and worked with the ex-child soldiers of Charles Taylor’s army.
Surrounded by the images of war, she realized that “if any changes were to be made in society it had to be by the mothers”.[4] She is a mother of six.In 2002, Leymah Gbowee was a social worker who organized the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. The peace movement started with local women praying and singing in a fish market. She organized theChristian and Muslim women of Monrovia, Liberia to pray for peace and to hold nonviolence protests. Thousands of women mobilized their efforts, staged protests that included a sex strike and the threat of a curse.
They forced a meeting with President Charles Taylor and extracted a promise from him to attend peace talks in Ghana to negotiate with the rebels from Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy. Gbowee then led a delegation of Liberian women to Ghana to continue to apply pressure on the warring factions during the peace process. They staged a silent protest outside the Presidential Palace, Accra, bringing about an agreement during the stalled peace talks.
Leymah Gbowee and Comfort Freeman, presidents of two different Lutheran churches, organized the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), and issued a statement of intent to the President: “In the past we were silent, but after being killed, raped, dehumanized, and infected with diseases, and watching our children and families destroyed, war has taught us that the future lies in saying NO to violence and YES to peace! We will not relent until peace prevails.” Their movement brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003 and led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation with a female president. Gbowee later endorsed Sirleaf in the2011 election.
Leymah Gbowee is the central character in the 2008 documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell. The film has been used as an advocacy tool in post-conflict zones like Sudan and Zimbabwe, mobilizing African women to petition for peace and security.
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