Maci Research exercise for ALWG

Gbowee is a role model for all men and women find the courage to fight in what you believe in

           Nobel Peace winner Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, social worker and women’s rights advocate. She is Founder and President of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, and is best known for leading a nonviolent movement that brought together Christian and Muslim women to play an important role in ending Liberia’s fourteen-year civil war in 2003. This historic achievement paved the way for the election of Africa’s first female head of state. She educated herself as a social worker and has worked to help those who suffered psychological trauma during the civil war in Liberia, including child soldiers. Gbowee demonstrated the power of social cohesion in the face of political unrest. She was the second African women to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights.

A child soldier is anyone who is less than 18 years of age that is attached to armed forces or an armed group 

The revolutionary front, or the rebels, was an army that fought and lost an 11 year war in Sierra Leone that ended in 2002. The R.U.F was founded by Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor, and their goal was to change the government of Sierra Leone. In March 1991, the R.U.F began carrying out attacks on towns along Sierra Leone’s eastern border with Liberia. Within a month the R.U.F had taken control of a sizeable region of the eastern part of Sierra Leone and was on track to overtake the government. The group later financed itself through control of the country’s diamond resources and for 11 years carried out violent attacks on civilians that claimed some 50,000 lives and displaced approximately two million people. By early 1995 the R.U.F had commandeered nearly all the country’s economic resources, and it had enlisted numerous child soldiers. The overall disarmament of R.U.F forces began in May 2001 by the capture of the rebel leaders and putting them on trial.. The end to the civil war was declared officially in January 2002.