Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize 2011: Official interview

Once you're doing anything that you're passionate about, the ideas come like this. You don't need to borrow ideas from anyone. Because it's not that women are more peaceful. Women are more thoughtful. So in solving conflict, most times the conversation is primarily around militarism, power, and all of those things. And women are the ones who come at the table with conversations about reopening hospitals and schools and providing food and shelter and safety zone for the vast majority of the people. And that's why it's important because women bring the human side of the conflict on the table. And most often it is forgotten when men are in that space of arguing about power. Peace for me is not the absence of war. Peace is the presence of conditions. That give dignity to all of us. So conditions that like housing, everything. So peace is the presence of those conditions that give dignity to all. It's there. Um, so I come from a continent and I come from a nation with many vices, but I've come to realize that it's not the vices that we live through. That define who we are. And it's not me. It's not just me. There are many women who would never have the opportunity to sit on this couch that are constantly doing work to transform their communities. They wake up every morning without any funding, without any opportunity to travel. Some of them operate in spaces where they don't even have food, where their security is at risk, but they keep at it. They keep at it because for them, this is the insurance policy for their daughters and for their sons. And most times I look at these women and I tell myself, if they with all of the challenges in their lives are not giving up, who am I to give up? And that thought alone is all of the energy booster that I need to keep going. Because I recognize that I'm a part of a community of women who are moving in spite of their circumstances. And I too have to keep moving. Oh, I think I would say all of my sister laureates, women who have won the Peace Prize and beyond, but I also am inspired by those women at the community level who are consistently working for peace and have no salary or anything, but they're still working. I had a teacher who was very straight and I had done his test, but the entire semester, I did not speak up in his class because I had no self-confidence. And when I did my assignment, he gave me F. And when I look at it, I was petrified because even though I hadn't spoken up in his class, I knew that I was brilliant. And so I went to him very scared because again, I had no self-esteem. And he said, I said to him, you graded my paper without reading it because you only saw my name and gave me F. And I got it back a week later and I had an A. But the reason why it's memorable to me is one, because he was willing to give me a second chance. Um, two, after that encounter, he would sit me down and say, if you don't use your voice, people will speak for you and people will make decisions for you and people will judge you based on your silence. And that's the reason why I remember him because those, that moment of the assignment was a turning point in my life. And I think it's basically one of those things that shaped me into being the activist that I am today. I think one of the most important things is that we, the way the world operates is we often think that everyone stands in a cubicle all by themselves, which is not true. The world is at a place now where we have to move away from our silo kind of operations into a more collaborative. And I think you can't talk peace without teachers. And again, I usually tell people that for me, after years of doing peace work, peace is not just the absence of war is the presence of conditions that give dignity to people. And I think it's important for teachers to interact with people of all fields. So that is an understanding that we're, we are mentoring. We are raising the next generation of young people who understand what, what dignity is, because in the absence of dignity, people get disenchanted. It leads to violence. And in most instances they leave to war. And so we all have a role to play in keeping our world safe, in keeping our nations safe, but also in creating or mentoring the next generation of peace builders. So the first thing is to find what you're passionate about, because activism is like a vast ocean. There's housing, there's reproductive rights, there's trans gay issues, there are peace issues, there's all kinds of issues that fits in the activist world. So the first thing a person needs to do is recognize that I'm passionate about this because your passion is the fuel or the vehicle, your anger is the fuel that you need to move from one point to the other. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that you should always have ideas. And because once you're doing anything that you're passionate about, the ideas come like this, you don't need to borrow ideas from anyone. And I think the final thing is just staying focused. But if you're remembering that if you're coming to be an activist because you want to make money, nope. I am most proud of the fact that even with the Peace Prize, I can still work at local community levels. I can still go to national levels and go to the international level. So I'm proud of the fact that I'm able to transcend different levels of society to do work. Well, my hope is that we will see less and less conflict in our world, but that women will not have to consistently make cases for why they are necessary for peace, for justice, for politics, that it will become natural as breathing for women to get strong positions in authority.