Common Core
Steward of Justice & Peace
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel was born in Argentina in 1931. Trained as an architect and sculptor, he left his career in 1974 at the age of 43 to coordinate non-violent organizations and coalitions in Latin America. Esquivel began a campaign to convince the United Nations of the need for a Human Rights Commission. He sent a record of all of the breaches of human rights that his organization, Servicio Paz y Justicia, “Service, Peace and Justice Foundation," could uncover in Latin America.
In 1977, Argentinean authorities jailed Pérez Esquivel without charge, subjected him to torture and held him without trial in Buenos Aires for fourteen months. It was his third arrest in as many years, each in a different country. After his release, his movements were restricted and he was closely monitored by the police. Over time these limits were eased and he was able to visit Europe in 1980.
For his leadership in the advocacy of human rights and democracy for the people of Latin America, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980. As he said in his Nobel acceptance speech, he continues to believe in, and work for, “a change based on justice, built with love and which will bring us the most anxiously desired fruit of peace.”
Peace as Economic Justice
Betty Williams has devoted her life to the advancement of peace and justice through non-violent means in Northern Ireland. Williams, along with Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founded the Community of Peace People, an organization dedicated to bringing together Catholics and Protestants end to sectarian violence.
Williams and Maguire witnessed a car crash that claimed the lives of two nephews and a niece. The driver, a member of the Irish Republican Army, had been fatally shot by British troops and his car veered into a crowd of pedestrians, killing three children. Williams, a Protestant, began circulating petitions through Protestant neighborhoods calling for an end to the sectarian violence. She gathered more than six thousand signatures. At the children’s funeral, Williams met Maguire, a Catholic, and they subsequently cofounded the Community of Peace People.
Williams and the Community of Peace People organized non-sectarian marches to end the violence. In one instance she organized a women’s march in which 10,000 Catholic and Protestant women marched to the graves of the children. The following week 35,000 people attended to show their support for unity and ending the conflict.
Williams currently serves as president of World Centers of Compassion for Children, whose mission is to provide a strong political voice for children in areas afflicted by war, hunger, social, economic or political upheaval. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Mairead Corrigan Maguire in 1976 in recognition of her dedication to ending the violence in Northern Ireland and building a peaceful future.
Promoting Change and Understanding Through Non-Violent Means
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, a Roman Catholic bishop, played an instrumental role in bringing peace to East Timor during the Indonesian occupation, from 1975-99. He was born in 1948 in Wailakama, a small rural village in East Timor, where he attended Catholic schools. In 1973, Belo traveled to Portugal to study theology and philosophy in preparation for the priesthood. During his absence, East Timor was granted independence from Portugal, but was subsequently invaded by Indonesia. The Indonesian occupation lasted 24 years and resulted in more than 200,000 deaths. In 1980, Belo was ordained as a priest in Portugal and returned to East Timor to serve as director of Fatumaca College. Eight years later, Belo was appointed apostolic administrator of the Dili Diocese by Indonesian President Suharto. In his new position, Belo assumed leadership of the Catholic Church of East Timor and became an outspoken representative
of the people. Within five months after his appointment, Belo delivered a sermon protesting the brutalities of the Kraras Massacre in 1975, in which Indonesia invaded and forcibly annexed East Timor. Despite multiple attempts on his life, Belo continued to publicly object to the ruthless and oppressive policies of the Indonesian government. He organized multiple nationwide peaceful protests which culminated in the eventual discharge of two Indonesian military generals. Throughout the movement for East Timor’s independence, Belo remained an avid believer in nonviolent resistance. In an open statement in 1994 he demanded that the government withdraw its military force, grant basic civil rights to its citizens and allow East Timor to conduct a democratic referendum, which was a chief contributing factor to East Timor’s independence in 2002. Belo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1996 for his selfless efforts to bring peace and democracy to East Timor.
China, Tibet, and a Message of Non-Violence
The ninth child born to a farming family in the Chinese border region of Amdo in 1935, two-year-old Lhamo Thondup was recognized by Tibetan monks as the fourteenth reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, considered a manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Renamed Tenzin Gyatso, he was brought to Lhasa to begin a sixteen-year education in metaphysical and religious texts to prepare him for his role as spiritual leader. The Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1949, and its aftermath, introduced brutal repressions in which thousands of Tibetans were executed in prisons or starved to death in prison camps, and hundreds of monasteries, temples, and other cultural and historic buildings were pillaged and demolished. In their effort to eradicate Tibetan culture and identity, the Chinese forced Tibetans to dress like Chinese, to profess atheism, to burn books, and to condemn, humiliate, and kill their elders and teachers. His life in jeopardy, the Dalai Lama fled into exile in northern India along with 80,000 Tibetans in 1959; he has never returned. Meanwhile, new waves of repression erupted in the 1960s and 1980s that continue in the present. To date, the Chinese government has murdered, massacred, tortured, or starved to death over one million Tibetans: one-fifth of the population. In the face of this state oppression, where do Tibetans gather strength to continue the struggle? His Holiness the Dalai Lama inspires Tibetans to embrace their beliefs and hold fast to their dreams. He has demanded that we think of those who have stolen his land and massacred his people, not as murderers and thieves, but as human beings deserving of forgiveness and compassion. Since 1959, His Holiness has received over 84 awards, honorary doctorates, and other prizes, in recognition of his lifelong message of peace, non-violence, inter-religious understanding, universal responsibility and compassion, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. His Holiness has also authored more than 72 books and describes himself as a simple Buddhist monk.
Reconciliation
Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s work confronting the bigotry and violence of South Africa’s apartheid system won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. Born in 1931 in Klerksdorf, he graduated from the University of South Africa in 1954 and was ordained as a priest in 1960. He studied and taught in England and South Africa, and in 1975 he was appointed dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, the first black South African to hold that position. In 1978 he became the first black general secretary of the South African Council of Churches. Outspoken against the evils of apartheid, he was vilified by friend and foe, press and politicians, yet through his extraordinary patriotism and commitment to humanity, his vision, and ultimately, his faith, he persevered. After South Africa’s first democratic, non-racial elections in 1994, effectively ending eighty years of white minority rule, the new parliament created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, appointing Tutu as its head to lead his country in an agonizing and unwavering confrontation of the brutality of the past. His faith in the Almighty is exemplified by his belief in the Word made flesh; that the battle for the triumph of good will be won or lost, not by prayers alone, but by actions taken to confront evil here on earth.
Today Archbishop Tutu chairs “the Elders” a group of prominent world leaders who contribute their integrity and moral stature to deal with some of the world’s most pressing issues. Other members include Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, Aung San Suu Kyi, and fellow Speak Truth To Power defender Muhammad Yunus.
Equality and Compromise in South Africa
In South Africa, from 1948 until 1994, there was a system of legal racial segregation known as apartheid. Under apartheid, laws stripped black people and other minorities of their rights and dignity. However, in 1994, through the efforts of a reform-minded President Frederik De Klerk and the ANC leader Nelson Mandela they brought an end to apartheid.
De Klerk‘s political career began in 1969, when he was elected to the House of Assembly, one of the houses of Parliament. He quickly moved up in the National Party where he was appointed head of several ministerial divisions including: mines and energy affairs, internal affairs, national education and planning. During this time in his career, de Klerk earned a reputation for supporting segregated universities and was not known to advocate reform.
In February 1989 he was elected head of the National Party. Only seven months later, after president P.W. Botha stepped down due to a stroke, de Klerk became South Africa’s new President. As President, de Klerk committed himself to the reform of the apartheid system. He entered into talks with representatives from four official racial groups (white, black, colored and Indian) to negotiate a post-apartheid constitution. De Klerk ordered the release of political prisoners including anti-apartheid activist and future South African President Nelson Mandela and lifted the ban on political groups such as the African National Congress and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania.
In 1991 de Klerk’s efforts culminated in the government’s repeal of the apartheid legislation, which was strongly supported by white voters. De Klerk, Nelson Mandela and several other representatives drafted a new constitution which led to multi-racial national elections resulting in the victory of the ANC and Mandela. In 1993, de Klerk received the Nobel Peace Prize along with Nelson Mandela for their contributions to the establishment of nonracial democracy in South Africa and ending apartheid.
Protection from Landmines
Jody Williams has dedicated her life to achieving a global ban on antipersonnel landmines, which still claim thousands of innocent lives every year. In 1992, she launched the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), to end to the production, trade, use and stockpiling of landmines, a weapon that has been in existence since the U.S. Civil War. Williams organized the ICBL to work with more than 1,000 NGO’s in 60 countries worldwide. As the ICBL’s chief strategist, Williams has written and spoken widely on the global problems involving the use of landmines. In 1996, Williams and the ICBL drafted the Ottawa Treaty with the Canadian government to ban landmines globally. To date, the Ottawa Treaty has been signed by 156 countries. Almost as noteworthy as the international support she created is the way she built that support. In the years before the Internet, Williams created a network of hundreds of organizations with a system for accountability through the use of fax machines. Through a simple system of sending faxes out to each constituent organization, Williams simultaneously made each organization feel they were an important part of the network and also created a system to maintain a permanent record of their interactions.
This pioneering spirit also led to Williams playing a key role in the creation of The Nobel Women’s Initiative, an organization of female Nobel Peace Prize winners dedicated to supporting women’s rights around the world. Williams received the Nobel Peace prize in 1997 for her work in the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines.
A Legacy of Leadership in Non-Violent Activism and Community Organizing for Social Change
One of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced, Congressman John Lewis has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building what he described as “The Beloved Community” in America.
The “conscience of the U.S. Congress” grew up as the son of sharecroppers, where he was inspired by the activism surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a protest campaign against racial segregation on public transit that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, and by the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to become a part of the Civil Rights Movement; a mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the U.S. that peaked between 1955 and 1965.
As a student at American Baptist College, Lewis organized sit-in demonstrations, was one of the Freedom Riders, who were civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States, and was named Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he helped form.
By 1963, he was dubbed one of the Big Six leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. At the age of twenty-three, he was an architect of, and a keynote speaker at, the historic March on Washington in August 1963. Attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation’s capital. The event is remembered for Lewis’ keynote address and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
In 1964, he coordinated voter registration drives and community action programs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer, a campaign in June 1964 that attempted to register as many African-American voters as possible. The following year, Lewis helped lead over 600 peaceful, orderly protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, with intentions to march to Montgomery to demonstrate the need for voting rights in the state. The marchers were attacked by Alabama state troopers in a brutal confrontation that became known as “Bloody Sunday” and hastened the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Despite more than forty arrests, physical attacks, and serious injuries, John Lewis remained a devoted advocate of the philosophy of nonviolence. After leaving SNCC in 1966, he continued his commitment to the Civil Rights Movement as Associate Director of the Field Foundation and his participation in the Southern Regional Council’s voter registration programs. Lewis went on to become the Director of the Voter Education Project (VEP). Under his leadership, the VEP transformed the nation’s political climate by adding nearly four million minorities to the voter rolls.
He was elected to Congress in November 1986 and has served as U.S. Representative of Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District since then.
John Lewis holds a B.A. in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University, and he is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been awarded over fifty honorary degrees and is the recipient of numerous awards from eminent national and international institutions, including the only John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for Lifetime Achievement ever granted.
Reconciliation
José Ramos-Horta received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his uncompromising and indefatigable work on behalf of the people of East Timor, brutally invaded by Indonesia in 1975. Muslim West Timor became part of Indonesia in 1946, while East Timor, settled in 1520 by the Portuguese with different language, religion, and customs, remained a colony until Portugal’s withdrawal in 1975. Twenty-five-year-old José Ramos-Horta was named foreign minister of the newly formed government in November 1975, but only a month later, Indonesian troops massed around the capital city, Dili, and, as Ramos-Horta’s plane touched down in Portugal, he was told that Indonesia had taken control of his country. In the years following the invasion, one-third of the population was to lose their lives to massacres, starvation, epidemics, and terror. Throughout the next two decades, Ramos-Horta traveled the globe speaking out against abuses, and, in 1992, he put forth a peace plan which called for a phased withdrawal of Indonesian troops culminating in a referendum in which the people of East Timor would vote for independence, integration into Indonesia, or free association with Portugal. When the September 1999 vote showed that 80 percent of Timorese had voted for independence, Indonesian armed forces and their militia allies went on a rampage. They massacred hundreds, burned to the ground 70 percent of the standing structures in the country, set fire to crops, killed thousands of farm animals, and destroyed major sewer systems and electric lines. Hundreds of thousands were forced into exile at gun-point. Ramos-Horta led the international charge against the slaughter, and, because of his appeals, the United Nations sent in troops to stop the violence. In December 1999, after twenty-four years in exile, José Ramos-Horta finally went home again to a free and independent East Timor. In May 2007, Ramos-Horta began serving as president of East Timor having previously served in other important government positions. In September 2008, Ramos-Horta survived an assassination attempt that left him critically injured. He fully recovered and served out his term as President of East TImor, leaving office on May 19, 2012.
Solidarity
Lech Walesa began his career in Poland’s Gdansk shipyards where his activism and charisma helped push his country to semi-free Parliamentary elections in which he was elected President.
Walesa co-founded Solidarity, the Soviet Bloc’s first independent trade union. He became a symbol of democracy and is widely recognized for leading Poland out of Communism. His actions are viewed as the crucial first step in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Walesa spent his early life as a mechanic and then in the Polish military. When he resigned from the military, Walesa was hired as an electrician at Gdansk shipyards. Troubled by the poor treatment of his fellow workers, he became involved in trade-union activism and quickly rose to prominence after organizing a strike in 1970. His activism garnered the attention of the Polish Government which soon placed him under surveillance. In 1976, he was fired from his position after multiple arrests. Walesa then emerged as a leader of the growing movement calling for better working conditions and the right to free association. In 1980, Walesa played an instrumental role in negotiations of the Gdansk Agreement between the Polish Government and striking workers, an agreement that culminated in the creation of Solidarity.
After the government imposed martial law and outlawed Solidarity, Walesa and his fellow activists were arrested and detained. Upon his release he returned to the docks as an electrician and continued his activism. The leading underground weekly paper featured his motto, “Solidarity will not be divided or destroyed”. His continued dedication led to the 1989 Round Table Agreement which resulted in a Solidarity-led government in which Lech Walesa was elected as President of Poland.
Although his presidency lasted only one term, his administration oversaw the transformation of Poland to a free market economy. After Walesa left office, the Polish economy was among the healthiest in central and eastern Europe. Walesa remains a symbol of hope and has inspired many to pursue similar aspirations of rights and freedoms throughout the world. In 1983, Lech Walesa received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to human rights and for playing a vital role in shaping Solidarity in his country.
From Bystander to Active Peace Builder
Mairead Corrigan Maguire was not actively involved with the Northern Ireland peace movement until she came face-to-face with violence in 1976. On August 10th, Danny Lennon and John Chillingworth of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), were driving through Belfast, with a rifle in their car. The IRA wanted to form a united Ireland through physical force that would be outside of United Kingdom control.
British troops, claiming that the rifle had been pointed at them, opened fire on the car instantly killing Lennon and seriously wounding Chillingworth. The car veered onto the sidewalk striking Mairead’s sister Anne and three of her children. While Anne survived, her three children died. Another peace activist, Betty Williams, also witnessed the crash and assembled 200 women to march for an end to the violence. When the marchers passed by Maguire’s home she quickly joined in.
Shortly after the march, Community of Peace People was founded by Maguire and Williams. Based on their shared belief that reconciliation was possible through the gradual integration of schools, residential areas and athletic clubs. Community of Peace People organized summer camps for Catholics and Protestants youths in an effort to create friendships in a secure and tolerant environment. The organization also published a biweekly paper, Peace by Peace, and provided families of prisoners’ bus service to and from Belfast’s jails.
In 1976, Maguire and Betty Williams were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for their contributions to the resolution of the problems in Northern Ireland. Since winning the award, Mairead Corrigan Magurie co-founded the Committee on Administration of Justice, a human rights organization that has been actively involved in the attempt to free political prisoners world-wide, from Nobel Peace Prize winners Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi to China’s Liu Xiaobo of China.
Free Expression, Free Elections, and Democratic Reforms
Born to Russian peasants in 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev quickly ascended the ladder of power in the Soviet Union. In his youth, Gorbachev joined the Komsomol or “Youth Communist League” and drove a combine harvester at a state-run farm in his hometown. Local party officials recognized his promise and sent him to law school at Moscow State University. At university, Gorbachev was an active Communist Party member and, by 1970, first secretary of the regional party committee. Only ten years later, Gorbachev had risen to the youngest full member of the Politburo, which was the highest executive committee in the Soviet Union.
In 1985, after two general secretaries of the Politburo died within a year of each other, the Party was looking for younger leadership. On March 11, 1985, the Politburo elected Mikhail Gorbachev general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After his election, Gorbachev set about installing bold reforms. Domestically, he pushed the Soviet bureaucracy to be more efficient, to increase worker production and to rapidly modernize. When his reforms yielded few results, Gorbachev instituted more far-reaching reforms including glasnost, or “openness,” to encourage free expression and information, and perestroika, or “restructuring,” that encouraged democratic processes and free-market ideas to take hold in Soviet economic and political life. He also worked for warmer relations and new trade partners abroad.
In 1987, he and U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed an agreement calling for both sides to destroy all of their intermediate-range nuclear-tipped missiles. In 1989, he openly supported reformist groups in Eastern European Soviet-bloc countries and informed their communist leaders that in the event of a revolution, he would not intervene. As a result, reformist groups overthrew the communist regimes and Gorbachev began withdrawing Soviet troops. By the summer of 1990, he even agreed to a reunification of East and West Germany. As power quickly shifted to new political parties, Gorbachev dismantled large swaths of the political structure throughout the Soviet Union. On December 25, 1991, the day he resigned, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. In 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in the peace process.
Nuclear Arms Control
Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt served three consecutive terms as the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009. The IAEA was created by the United Nations in 1957 to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Within the first few months of Dr. ElBaradei’s tenure with the IAEA, he and his staff began to search more intensely for undeclared nuclear activities around the world. In 2002, ElBaradei and former IAEA Director General Hans Blix personally traveled to Iraq, with a team of UN weapons inspectors, to prove that documents suggesting Iraq had tried to purchase uranium for nuclear weapons were inauthentic. Despite the proof that ElBaradei and Blix found in Iraq, the U.S. invasion began on March 19, 2003.
Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Dr. ElBaradei also mediated Iran’s controversial nuclear policy. Later elected as the leader of the National Association for Change in Egypt, ElBaradei became a major voice for democratic change and played a key role in the 2011 protests, which led to the ousting of former president Hosni Mubarak.
ElBaradei has lectured on the subjects of international law, international organizations, arms control and the peaceful use of nuclear energy and has authored several books and articles on these topics. ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Peace in 2005, for his efforts in advocating for the safe use of nuclear energy.
Peace by Disarmament
War raged throughout Central America. The Sandinistas ruled Nicaragua with Soviet backing, and right-wing military governments fought guerrilla insurgencies in El Salvador and Guatemala, while tensions in Honduras were fueled by millions in military aid from the United States and the USSR. Oscar Arias dared to advocate for peace against these powerful Cold War interests and to broker the Arias Peace Plan, which brought a cessation of fighting to his neighbors and prosperity to his own peaceful country of Costa Rica. Born in 1940, Arias studied law and economics at the University of Costa Rica and received a doctoral degree at the University of Essex, England. Appointed minister of planning and economic policy in Costa Rica in 1972, he was elected to Congress in 1978 and to the presidency in 1986. On the day he was inaugurated, Arias called for an alliance for democracy and social and economic liberty throughout Latin America. In 1987, he drafted the peace plan, which led to the Esquipulas II accords, signed by all the Central American presidents on August 7. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending conflict in the region. Since then, Arias has used his considerable moral authority to embark on a worldwide campaign for human development, democracy, and demilitarization, applying the lessons from the Central American peace process to conflicts across the globe. From 2006 until May 2010, President Arias served his second term as president of Costa Rica.
Indigenous Rights
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a heroine to Maya Indians in Guatemala and indigenous peoples throughout the world. Born into an impoverished family in 1959, the daughter of an active member of the CUC (Committee of Campesinos [Agricultural Workers]), she joined the union in 1979, despite the fact that several members of her family had been persecuted for their membership. In the early 1980s, the Guatemalan military launched a “scorched earth campaign,” burning more than four hundred Mayan villages to the ground, massacring hundreds of children, women, and the infirm; and brutally torturing and murdering anyone suspected of dissenting from the policy of repression. The military killed up to two hundred thousand people, mostly Mayan Indians, and forced one million people into exile. Menchú’s mother and brother were kidnapped and killed, and her father burned alive. While the Guatemalan army marched against its people, the rest of the world remained almost completely silent.
In 1983, Menchú published her autobiography, an account of the Guatemalan conflict. I, Rigoberta Menchú was translated into twelve languages, and was an influential factor in changing world opinion about support for the military. Fifteen years later, discrepancies were found about certain details of the work, but there is no dispute regarding its essential truth and the massive suffering of Guatemala’s indigenous peoples at the hands of the hemisphere’s most brutal military government. In 1992, Rigoberta Menchú Tum won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. Menchú has been forced into exile three times for her advocacy within Guatemala. Despite the threats, she continues her work today on human rights, indigenous rights, women’s rights, and development. In 1993 she was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. She has been active in trying to attain justice for the genocide of Guatemala, pursuing claims today in Spanish courts due to her country’s legacy of impunity for those in power.
Blueprint for Peace
One of the architects of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, an agreement between Israel and Palestine, Shimon Peres has been involved in the government of Israel since 1952. During his long political career he held many cabinet positions, including Prime Minister. In 2007, the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, elected Peres as its President.
Born in Poland in 1923, Peres spent the formative years of his youth under the tutelage of his grandfather, Rabbi Zvi Meltzer, where he learned the Talmud and followed Haredi Judaism, which is the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism. In 1934, Peres and his family moved to Tel Aviv, which was still part of Palestine. During World War II, all of Peres’ remaining relatives in Poland were killed for their religious beliefs.
Peres began his career in government when he was appointed Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Defense in 1952. He became a Member of the Knesset, Israel’s legislative body in 1959, but is perhaps best known for his work as Israel’s Foreign Minister starting in 1986.
As foreign minister, Shimon Peres participated in 14 separate meetings in Oslo, Norway, with Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat negotiating a path to peace. Throughout the lengthy meetings, both sides stayed in the same residence and often shared meals together, leading to a growing bond between the people involved. The Oslo Peace Accords were eventually signed by both sides on September 13, 1993 at the White House in Washington, D.C.
The Nobel Peace Prize 1994 was awarded jointly to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East. In his Nobel acceptance speech Peres stated that "classical diplomacy and strategy were aimed at identifying enemies and confronting them. Now they have to identify dangers, global or local, and tackle them before they become disasters."
In 2007 Peres was chosen by Kadima, a centrist and liberal political party in Israel, to run for President. Peres was elected by the Knesset on June 13, 2007. He was sworn in as President on July 15, 2007 for a seven-year term. He is the first former Prime Minister to be elected President of Israel. He continues to work on building a peaceful future as the President of Israel.
Human Rights for All
A prominent lawyer and former judge, Shirin Ebadi founded the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran to increase the rights of women and children and protect prisoners of conscience and those accused of political crimes. Ebadi has seen how women are frequently mistreated in Iran and has personally faced discrimination, threats of imprisonment and exile for her human rights work.
At the young age of 22, Ebadi was appointed one of the first female judges in Iran. She was poised to become a Chief Justice until the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in a revolution and succeeded by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini created a conservative theocracy where women and minorities would not have equal rights. As a result, Ebadi and all of her fellow female judges were dismissed from their positions and, in some cases, re-assigned to lower posts. Ebadi was re-assigned to a clerical position in the courtroom where she once presided. She requested early retirement and established a private practice dedicated to defending political dissidents and women and children. Her defiance resulted in multiple arrests, but also cemented her place as one of the most prominent lawyers in Iran and international recognition as a human rights defender.
In 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote human rights, especially the rights of women, children, and political prisoners in Iran. She is the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and only the fifth Muslim to receive a Nobel Prize in any field.
Shirin Ebadi also established numerous non-governmental organizations in Iran including the Million Signatures Campaign to end legal discrimination against women in Iran. Along with fellow Nobel laureate Jody Williams, Ebadi founded the Nobel Women’s Initiative in 2006, to engage female Nobel laureates in a united effort for peace and justice. Other Nobel Laureats involved in founding the Nobel Women's Initiative include Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Wangari Maathai, Mairead Maguire, and Aung San Suu Kyi. Ebadi has published numerous articles and books concerning human rights in Iran that have been translated into 14 languages around the world.