Tawakkol Karman, the first Arab woman and youngest recipient ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, visited Elizabethtown College last week to share her ideals of peace and justice. Her visit was part of the Ware Lecture Series, which began in 2007 and is dedicated to bringing global citizens to speak on campus.
Karman, a native of Yemen, spoke in Leffler Chapel and Performance Center on Thursday, April 10. Her speech, “Women, Human Rights and the Arab Revolution,” focused on her experiences coordinating peaceful protests in Yemen’s capital as part of the Arab Spring.
Her goal is to help the different cultures of the world live together in peace and coexistence. “Peace is to live together, to respect our differences and to work together for our joint and common values,” Karman said with assistance from a translator. “Coexistence means to accept the other and to live with the other. With regard to peacemaking, it has a different meaning in different regions and differs from one issue to another. But if there are disputers, we must tell people that what brings us together is our values and that the land should be enough for all of us and that we must love each other, coexist and respect each other and give up violence.”
The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has become known as the “Mother of the Revolution” in Yemen, also visited several classes to discuss peacemaking and nonviolent protests with Etown students. Although Karman said that the Arab Spring did not receive the media coverage it deserved, she believes that the media has improved its coverage of the current Middle Eastern conflict. However, she maintains that the coverage has not reached the point at which it needs to be. “Until this moment, there has been failure on the part of the media to cover what is happening in the area,” she said. “This negligence exists not only in the media but in the governments as well. They have neglected and disappointed the Arab Spring in Syria and Egypt. To be fair, the media and the civil organizations in the west are doing better than the governments, but their involvement is not up to what is required in order to help these people that are dreaming of having a better life.”
Despite her disappointment in the media’s recent work, she believes that the world is beginning to unite in a way that she described when she received her award in 2011. “We are becoming closer,” Karman said. “We are not becoming one village — we are becoming one family. I believe the whole world is becoming one nation.”
In addition to working as a peaceful protester for human and civil rights, Karman is also an activist for women’s rights around the world.
As an Arab woman, she once wore a niqab, which is a traditional cloth worn by Muslim women when in public or in the presence of men and it covers nearly the entire face. During Arab Spring, however, Karman decided to transition to wearing only a head scarf as part of her protest. Although she states that the niqab belongs to Yemen’s customs and not Islam’s, she feels that it stands in the way of women and their goals. “I advise any woman who is working not to wear a niqab, because no matter how she succeeds in her work, the niqab is an obstacle between her and those she is trying to communicate with,” she said. “It will weaken her issue, and it will not lead her to the results she desires to achieve. I advise women who are working not to wear it, but it is a personal choice. It is a matter of personal freedom and that is my position.”
