A Triumph of African Wisdom
Green Party Activist Wins Nobel Peace Prize
| This article is compiled from news release sources and excerpts from an Associated Press report. |
Kenyan Deputy Environment Minister and peace activist Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, October 8, 2004.
Dr. Maathai is founder of the Mazingira Green Party and the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. In 2002, before her current appointment, she was elected to the Kenyan parliament on the Green Party ticket in the first free elections held in the country in decades.
"Wangari Maathai has been a good friend to Greens in the U.S. for many years," said Tony Affigne, co-chair of the International Committee of the Green Party of the United States. "Her recognition as this year's Nobel winner is no surprise to those of us in the Green movement who've seen her decades-long commitment to peace and ecological wisdom."
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The 64-year-old Maathai, the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize in any category since the awards were first handed out in 1901, gained recent acclaim for a campaign planting 30 million trees to stave off deforestation.
"Many of the wars in Africa are fought over natural resources," Maathai told The Associated Press. "Ensuring they are not destroyed is a way of ensuring there is no conflict." Maathai, Kenya's deputy environment minister and a former presidential candidate, has worked for nearly half her life to protect the environment and human rights. During the 1980s and 1990s, she also campaigned against government oppression and founded Kenya's Green Party in 1987. She was repeatedly arrested and beaten for protesting former President Daniel arap Moi's environmental policies and human rights record. |
U.S. Greens, sending their congratulations to Dr. Maathai, noted her long career of activism on behalf of human rights, especially equality for women, democracy, peaceful resolution to Kenya's internal strife, and the environment. The first environmentalist and first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Maathai was jailed in 1991 for working to stop deforestation in Kenya.
Dr. Maathai and the women-based Green Belt Movement, which planted more than 30 million trees, have already received numerous awards, including the Petra Kelly Prize for Environment, named for the founder of the first Green Party in Germany.
"Wangari Maathai showed how planting a tree can be a gesture of peace and liberation," said Jody Grage Haug, national co-chair of the Green Party. "Dr. Maathai, who has defied dictatorships, corruption, and corporate greed on behalf of the Kenyan people and the land they live on, is an example for all of us in the Green Party."
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