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2009-11-17 issue:

Peace movement leader returns to EMU

The work of Leymah Gbowee brought a peace accord in Liberia.

by Jim Bishop of Eastern Mennonite University

Print Article

Her name is Leymah Gbowee, a 2007 graduate of Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in Harrisonburg, Va.

Before coming to EMU, Gbowee emerged into the world spotlight when she and a brave group of ordinary women banded together to do the unimaginable—use nonviolent methods to confront Liberia’s despotic president, Charles Taylor, and his warlord opponents.

Both sides used child soldiers, who terrorized the population, including raping a large percentage of Liberia’s women and girls. The mothers dressed in white, held up handwritten signs saying, "We Want Peace," and appeared wherever they found the warring leaders. They also told the men in their families "no sex" until they do everything in their power to stop the war.

At one point the women linked arms and barricaded negotiators for the opposing sides in a conference room. Gbowee threatened to take off her clothes, followed by the other protesting women—an act that, in Liberian culture, would shame and disgrace the men—if the negotiators failed to stay at the table until they arrived at a peace agreement.

The women's efforts succeeded, and a peace accord was signed in the summer of 2003, leading to UN-supervised disarmament beginning in the winter of 2003-04 and finally to the election of Africa’s first woman president in January 2006.

On behalf of the women she led, Gbowee has received a half dozen major awards, including one from Harvard University. She has appeared on "Bill Moyers Journal" and "The Colbert Report” and is the main figure in a documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008, where it won Best Documentary Feature. It is directed by Emmy-winning and Academy Award nominated filmmaker Gini Reticker and produced by Abigail Disney.

Liberia was founded as a colony in the 1820s as a place for freed slaves from the United States to emigrate to Africa. A military-led coup in 1980 overthrew then-president William R. Tolbert, launching a period of instability that eventually led to civil war.

Charles Taylor invaded the country in 1989. During his time in power, some 250,000 people were killed and over a million others displaced in a country of just over 3 million.

A formerly unknown social worker and mother of four, Gbowee organized hundreds of workers to call for peace. She attended EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute in 2004. She returned to SPI in 2006 and went on to earn a master’s degree in conflict transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding the following year. She now heads Women Peace and Security Network Africa, offering training and counsel to women all over Africa, with special focus on security issues.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Liberian women’s movement, she told the EMU audience, was "the way Christians and Muslims overlooked their differences and worked together to promote the need for peace."

"Before I came to CJP, I was a bit selfish—my entire world view was Liberia or West Africa," she said. "CJP put names and faces to conflicts in other parts of the world."

Gbowee shared more of her faith journey in university chapel on Oct. 23, retracing her steps from that of a homeless, unemployed, despairing person to a leader in her home and neighboring countries, one whom governmental and international leaders call on regularly for counsel.

"I haven't reached this place where I am today on my own," she said. "It is by the grace and mercy of God. I don't see how it’s possible to be an effective peacebuilder in any setting without a strong faith."

Asked what sustains her in the midst of stressful, difficult work, Gbowee said, "I am basically an optimistic person. I believe there are more good people than bad people in this world—it's just that we, the good people, refuse to step out."

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