Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to 3 Women

Nobel Peace Prize winners Tawakkol Karman of Yemen (R) Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee (C) and Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (L)

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian women's rights campaigner Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman, a female icon of the protests in Yemen, shared 2011's Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday.

The three women were recognized their struggles against the backdrops of the Arab Spring and democratic progress in Africa. They represent the struggle for "human rights in general and of women for equality and peace in particular," according to Prize committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland.

"Be not afraid to denounce injustice, though you may be outnumbered. Be not afraid to seek peace, even if your voice may be small. Be not afraid to demand peace," Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female president, said upon receiving the award in Oslo, as cited by CNN.

"The world used to remember Liberia for child soldiers but they now remember our country for the white t-shirt women," Gbowee pointed out referring to the women wearing white T-shirts who demanded an end to Liberia's brutal civil war.

"I have always believed that resistance against repression and violence is possible without relying on similar repression and violence," Karman declared upon becoming the first Arab woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

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