Tawakkol Karman Biography

Tawakkol Karman is the Yemeni political activist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with two other female activists in 2011.  She and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee (both of Liberia) were given the award “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Tawakkol Karman was born in Yemen. Her father, Abdul Salam, was a legal expert who later became the government minister for legal and parliamentary affairs. Karman earned a master’s degree in political science from Sana’a University. In 2005, she helped found Women Journalists Without Chains, an organization that released annual reports on press freedom in Yemen. She also joined the Islah, Yemen’s conservative Islamist opposition party.

Her activism earned her the enmity of the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, which harassed and jailed her more than once. During the “Arab Spring” of 2010 and 2011, as activists were fighting entrenched rulers in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, Karman began leading Yemeni protests against the rule of President Saleh. Her floral headdress, unusual in a country more used to women in conservative black chadors, became her trademark, and though she was only 32 she earned the nickname of “Mother of the Revolution.”

Tawakkol Karman was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October of 2011. The next month, President Saleh agreed to step down after 33 years as president, although he did not immediately move to give up power. After Yemen’s Parliament passed a law granting him immunity from prosecution, he did indeed step down in 2012. Since then, Tawakkol Karman has continued working as an activist and speaker worldwide.