Jody Williams | |
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 Williams in 2001 | |
| Born | October 9, 1950 |
| Education | |
| Known for | 1997 Nobel Peace Prize |
Jody Williams (born October 9, 1950) is an American political activist known for her work in banning anti-personnel landmines, her defense of human rights (especially those of women), and her efforts to promote new understandings of security in today's world. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 [1] for her work toward the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines.
Williams earned a Master in International Relations from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (a division of Johns Hopkins University) in Washington, D.C. (1984), an MA in teaching Spanish and English as a second language from the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont (1976), and a BA from the University of Vermont (1972).
Williams served as the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) from early 1992 until February 1998. Before that work, she spent eleven years on various projects related to the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador, where, according to the Encyclopedia of Human Rights, she "spent the 1980s performing life-threatening human rights work." [2]
In an cooperative effort with governments, UN bodies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Williams served as a chief strategist and spokesperson for the ICBL, which she developed from two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with a staff of one – herself – to an international powerhouse of 1,300 NGOs in ninety countries.
From its small beginning and official launch in 1992, Williams and the ICBL achieved the campaign's goal of an international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines during a diplomatic conference held in Oslo in September 1997. The Ottawa Treaty that banned land-mines is credited to her and the ICBL. [1] Three weeks later, she and the ICBL were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At that time, she became the tenth woman – and third American woman – in its almost hundred-year history to receive the Prize.
In November 2004, after discussions with Iranian Peace Laureates Shirin Ebadi and Professor Wangari Maathai of Kenya, Williams established the Nobel Women's Initiative which was launched in January 2006. Williams has since served as its chair. This initiative brought together six of the female Peace Laureates, the women seek to use their influence to promote the work of women working for peace with justice and equality. [3] (Aung San Suu Kyi is an honorary member.)
In 2020, Williams called upon Chevron Corporation to pay cleanup costs to the residents of the Lago Agrio oil field which were awarded in 2011 and have been in litigation ever since. [4]
Williams is quoted as saying, "The image of peace with a dove flying over a rainbow and people holding hands singing kumbaya ends up infantilizing people who believe that sustainable peace is possible. If you think that singing and looking at a rainbow will suddenly make peace appear then you're not capable of meaningful thought, or understanding the difficulties of the world." [5] [6]
In 2019, Williams called for a treaty to end violence against women, in support of Every Woman Coalition. [7]
Since 2007, Williams has been the Sam and Cele Keeper Professor in Peace and Social Justice in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. Before that she had been a distinguished visiting professor of global justice at the college since 2003.
Williams continues to be recognized for her contributions to human rights and global security. She is the recipient of fifteen honorary degrees. In 2004, in its first such listing, she was named by Forbes magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world. She is one of the female Nobel Prize laureates to be recognized as a "Woman of the Year" by Glamour magazine – which has also honoured Hillary Clinton, Katie Couric and Barbara Walters.
Williams' work includes articles for magazines and newspapers, for example the Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The Independent (UK), The Irish Times, The Toronto Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Times, La Jornada (Mexico), The Review of the International Red Cross, Columbia University's Journal of Politics and Society.
She added several chapters to numerous books:
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is a non-partisan federation of national medical groups in 63 countries, representing doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned people who share the goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world free from the threat of nuclear annihilation. The organization's headquarters is in Malden, Massachusetts. IPPNW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.
Elizabeth Williams was a peace activist from Northern Ireland. She was a co-recipient with Mairead Corrigan of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work as a cofounder of Community of Peace People, an organisation dedicated to promoting a peaceful resolution to the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations whose stated objective is a world free of anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions, where mine and cluster munitions survivors see their rights respected and can lead fulfilling lives.
Mairead Maguire, also known as Mairead Corrigan Maguire and formerly as Mairéad Corrigan, is a peace activist from Northern Ireland. She co-founded, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, the Women for Peace, which later became the Community for Peace People, an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Maguire and Williams were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize.
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian Nobel laureate, lawyer, writer, teacher and a former judge and founder of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. In 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her pioneering efforts for democracy and women's, children's, and refugee rights. She was the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to receive the award.
The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction of 1997, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty, the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, or often simply the Mine Ban Treaty, aims at eliminating anti-personnel landmines (APLs) around the world.
Survivor Corps, formerly known as the Landmine Survivors Network, was a global network of survivors helping survivors to recover from war, rebuild their communities, and break cycles of violence. The organization operated programs in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Colombia, Croatia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Jordan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Uganda, Rwanda, the United States and Vietnam.
Jerry White is Executive Director of the United Religions Initiative. He co-founded the Survivor Corps, formerly the Landmine Survivors Network, created by and for survivors to help victims of war, and is a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which was the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. He was a Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia from 2015 to 2022. He is a Senior Ashoka Fellow and a Gabelli Fellow at the Gabelli School of Business in New York City.
The International Peace Bureau, founded in 1891, is one of the world's oldest international peace federations. The organisation was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910 for acting "as a link between the peace societies of the various countries". In 1913, Henri La Fontaine was also awarded the Prize "[For his work as] head of the International Peace Bureau". As of 2012, eleven other Nobel Peace Prize laureates have been members of the IPB.
The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) is an international civil society movement, which campaigns against the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster munitions. Cluster munitions, a type of munition stockpiled by more than 80 states, are documented to have caused significant civilian deaths and injuries and have frequently caused indiscriminate effects in both conflict and peace times. Their use is prohibited under the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, a convention formally endorsed on May 30, 2008, in Dublin, Ireland, and was signed by 94 countries in Oslo on December 3-4, 2008. The Convention entered into force, becoming binding upon state parties to the convention on August 1, 2010, after 30 countries formally ratified it. As of January 4, 2012, it had been signed by 111 countries, of which 77 have ratified.
Kenneth R. Rutherford is the co-founder of the Survivor Corps, a group that helps the victims of war, and an American researcher in the field of political science. He is also a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which was the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Rutherford has served as the Director of the James Madison University Center for International Stabilization and Recovery, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mauritania (1987-1989), a UNHCR Emergency Refugee Coordinator in Senegal (1989), and a humanitarian emergency relief officer in northern Kenya and Somalia (1993). In 2024, Rutherford taught at Hue University in Vietnam as a Fulbright Scholar Fellow.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is a global civil society coalition working to promote adherence to and full implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The campaign helped bring about this treaty. ICAN was launched in 2007. In 2022, it counted 661 partner organizations in 110 countries.
Nobelity is a feature documentary which looks at the world's most pressing problems through the eyes of Nobel laureates, including Desmond Tutu, Sir Joseph Rotblat, Ahmed Zewail and Wangari Maathai.
The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) is a service located within the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations that specializes in coordinating and implementing activities to limit the threat posed by mines, explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices.
Tawakkol Abdel-Salam Khalid Karman is a Yemeni Nobel Laureate, journalist, politician, and human rights activist. She leads the group "Women Journalists Without Chains," which she co-founded in 2005. She became the international public face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising that was part of the Arab Spring uprisings. In 2011, she was reportedly called the "Iron Woman" and "Mother of the Revolution" by some Yemenis. She is a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Yemeni, the first Arab woman, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Prize.
Medico International is a human rights organization based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Its declared aim is to achieve the human right to health globally. The organization is committed to the global realization of the human right to health. Therefore, the organization supports partner organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, who deliver emergency aid in disaster situations and supports long-term projects in the areas of health care, human rights and psychosocial work.
Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi-born Yazidi human rights activist based in Germany. In 2014, as part of the Yazidi genocide by the Islamic State, she was abducted from her hometown of Kocho in Iraq and much of her community was massacred. After losing most of her family, Murad was held as an Islamic State sex slave for three months, alongside thousands of other Yazidi women and girls.
The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition on such weapons," according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee announcement on October 6, 2017. The award announcement acknowledged the fact that "the world's nine nuclear-armed powers and their allies" neither signed nor supported the treaty-based prohibition known as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons or nuclear ban treaty, yet in an interview Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen told reporters that the award was intended to give "encouragement to all players in the field" to disarm. The award was hailed by civil society as well as governmental and intergovernmental representatives who support the nuclear ban treaty, but drew criticism from those opposed. At the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony held in Oslo City Hall on December 10, 2017, Setsuko Thurlow, an 85-year-old woman who survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and ICAN Executive Director Beatrice Fihn jointly received a medal and diploma of the award on behalf of ICAN and delivered the Nobel lecture.
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