Nobel Peace Prize 2004
Kenyan Woman, Wangari Maathai, first environmentalist to win Peace Prize
21.10.2004 |WECF Press Release
21, October 2004
Utrecht, Netherlands
Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) congratulates Wangari Maathai on becoming the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her courage, persistence and achievements are an inspiration to others around the world. WECF also shares Wangari’s pleasure that the Nobel team have recognized the link between the environment and peace.
In the 1980s Wangari Maathai established the “Green Belt Movement” with women in Kenya. This is a very powerful movement, involving among other things, the planting of 30 million trees across Kenya and the creation of jobs for women. Her example is now followed in other African countries such as Uganda.
WECF has known Wangari since the Global Women's conference in Miami in 1991. We have also met her and worked with her quite often at international meetings and conferences in New York and Beijing. In the 1990’s, when Wangari clashed with the former president of Kenya, Arap Moi, WECF campaigned for her delivery from prison twice. We did this along with WEDO and many other women’s groups.
WECF’s director, Sascha Gabizon met Wangari at the Nairobi Global Women’s
Conference, she said “It has been a great pleasure and source of pride that we, all the environmental women's activists, who gathered together at the WAVE conference, could celebrate Wangari Maathai. She is the most courageous environmental activist I know, and has often suffered for her persistence in trying to protect the people and their environment in Kenya. It is very timely that the Nobel Peace Prize was given to her after 30 years of hard work. Women have long been the unsung heroines of the environmental and peace movements and it is about time that their contributions were recognized.”
WECF members who were in Nairobi gathered to congratulate Wangari and give her flowers in the name of all the members of the WECF network.
Wangari stated, “ The prize came as a total surprise to me. But I am very happy that the Noble Prize Team have made the link between environment and peace.
In our country the erosion of the soils due to logging of the forests was increasingly pushing families into poverty and into migration to the cities and this could have sparked more violent developments. By protecting our natural resources we work for peace”.
Sascha Gabizon further stated, “We must take better care of the Earth if we are to avoid future conflicts over land, oil and other resources. Wangari is an example to us all and I am glad the Nobel Committee has recognized the importance of her work.”
For more information contact:
Women In Europe For A Common Future,
Tel: +31 30 231 0300
e-mail: wecf@wecf.org
