-The donor community need to support the civil society movement in Kenya. That is the only way that we can develop a critical mass of well informed people who can act as checks and balances to Government, said Professor Wangari Maathai in her acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony this afternoon. Maathai also emphasised the connections between environmental and land rights issues, poverty, social unrest and conflict. (10-DEC-04)
To those still in doubt about the legitimacy of awarding such a prestigeous peace prize to someone who has primarily stood out as an environmentalist, Maathai?s speech was a thorough and powerful justification for the Nobel Committee?s own reasoning. Carefully crafted, it established the direct and immediate connections between on the one hand environmental issues, on the other issues of human rights and peace. Particularly prevalent in the third world, she exemplified by way of referring the audience, both the one present at the ceremony and the hundreds of millions watching worldwide, to her own organisation the Green Belt Movement?s rationale, which is essentially to replant deforested areas and thus prevent erosion, the spread of desert-like conditions, reduced bio-diversity, poverty, famine, migration, social and political unrest, ethnic clashes, conflict and war. Along this chain of events, numerous human rights are violated, and by way of going, literally, to the root cause of all these problems, the Green Belt movement has managed to prevent unknown, but most probably very significant amounts of conflict and war.
An example to all women, around the world
Professor Ole Danbolt Mjos, the current Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, spoke on behalf of all five members and their Secretary, Professor Geir Lundestad, when he said that Wangari Maathai – the first African from the vast areas between South Africa (the late Chief Albert Luthuli, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, ex-President Nelson Mandela and his colleague Fredrik Willem de Klerk) in the south, Ghana (UN Secretary General Kofi Annan) in the west and Egypt (ex-President, the late Anwar el Sadat) in the north, and also the first African woman ever to recive the Nobel Peace Prize – should stand as an example to all African women, in fact all women around the world, for the way she testifies to the fact that it is possible, no matter who you are and where you come from, to make a difference. Beyond being a die-hard environmentalist throughout the entire Moi era, Maathai has also been a constant nuisance to the ever more authoritarian power executed by this recently acquitted regime. For this, she has been beaten up, imprisoned and in numerous other ways persecuted, harassed and mistreated, but with the help of organisations like Release Political Prisoners and People Against Torture, both part of the Human Rights House Foundation?s attempt to establish a Human Rights House in Kenya, she has been helped to security and enabled to continue her work, over and over again. No wonder, therefore, that she made such a clear reference to such organisations, and to the need to continue to support them, for the sake of democracy itself.
