About Leymah Gbowee

Country of Birth

Liberia

Industry

Activism and Social Work

Top achievements

In 2003, Leymah Gbowee led the Women of Liberia Mass Action For Peace, a nonviolent women’s peace movement, to help end the Second Liberian Civil War. For her efforts in peace-building and furthering the rights and safety of women, Gbowee was one of three recipients of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who became the President of Liberia, and Tawakkul Karmān, a Yemeni activist. Their efforts helped usher in peace and a free election in 2005. 

Early life

Leymah Roberta Gbowee was born in central Liberia on February 1, 1972. Her plans to continue her education after graduating high school were interrupted when Liberia became engulfed in a civil war. When she was 17, Gbowee and her family were separated. She fled her home in Monrovia to a refugee camp in Ghana, where she became a young mother. Through great difficulty, she eventually returned to Liberia with her children.

Career

As the war raged for most of 14 years, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) launched a program to train social workers to help children and adults recover from war-related trauma. Through the program, Gbowee trained as a trauma counselor and worked with former child soldiers, sexual assault victims, and children who saw their parents killed.

Activism 

Leymah Gbowee joined the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), Africa’s first regional peace organization. She launched the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) and worked as an unpaid coordinator for WIPNET’s Liberian Women’s Initiative Program in the evenings while raising her five children. 

One night in 2003, Gbowee felt called upon to start a peace movement in defiance of President Taylor, the dictator ruling Liberia at the time. She gathered like-minded women to form the Women Of Liberia Mass Action For Peace. The organization recruited women from various religious organizations and staged sit-ins and mass demonstrations in protest of the atrocities committed by President Taylor and the war. 

Achievements

Gbowee and more than 2,000 of her collaborators dressed in white T-shirts and decorated their hair with white hair ties as they occupied an area along a route where Taylor frequented (or frequently passed). Because of this protest President Taylor allowed Gbowee and her collaborators to plead their case. 

After serious protests , President Taylor finally agreed to peace talks. When the talks stalled, Gbowee took action and led a delegation to Ghana, where they protested outside the negotiators’ hotel rooms. The women stopped the delegates from leaving before reaching an agreement and threatened to undress when the authorities attempted to force them out. In African culture, undressing would be considered a humiliation to the male delegates. 

This action helped push the delegates to return to the stalled negotiations until they reached an agreement. 

Recognition

Gbowee’s efforts resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. 

Additional facts

• Gbowee has four biological children and an adopted child.
• She led a highly-publicized “sex strike,” which drew international media attention.