Tawakkul Karman

Tawakkul 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,[9] becoming the first Yemeni, the first Arab woman, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Karman gained prominence in her country after 2005 in her roles as a Yemeni journalist and an advocate for a mobile phone news service denied a license in 2007, after which she led protests for press freedom. She organized weekly protests after May 2007 expanding the issues for reform. She redirected the Yemeni protests to support the "Jasmine Revolution," as she calls the Arab Spring, after the Tunisian people overthrew the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. She was a vocal opponent who called for the end of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime.

Karman started protests as an advocate for press freedoms in her country. At a time when she was advocating for more press freedom, she responded to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005 by writing: "We are not to call for tyranny and bans on freedom."

She stopped wearing the traditional niqab in favour of more colourful hijabs that showed her face. She first appeared without the niqab at a conference in 2004. Karman replaced the niqab for the scarf in public on national television to make her point that the full covering is cultural and not dictated by Islam. She told the Yemen Times in 2010 that:

Women should stop being or feeling that they are part of the problem and become part of the solution. We have been marginalized for a long time, and now is the time for women to stand up and become active without needing to ask for permission or acceptance. This is the only way we will give back to our society and allow for Yemen to reach the great potentials it has.

She has alleged that many Yemeni girls suffer from malnutrition so that boys could be fed and also called attention to high illiteracy rates: two-thirds of Yemeni women are unable to read, advocating for laws that would prevent females younger than 17 from being married. In a statement made to Human Rights Watch, a human rights research and advocacy group, she stated that Yemen's revolution "didn't happen just to solve political problems, but also to address societal problems, the most important being child marriage." Despite most members of her party holding a different view on child marriage than her, she claims her party is the most open to women. In clarifying her position, she said:

Our party needs the youth but the youth also need the parties to help them organise. Neither will succeed in overthrowing this regime without the other. We don't want the international community to label our revolution an Islamic one.

She has also led protests against government corruption. Her stand on the ouster of Saleh became stronger after village lands of families around the city of Ibb were appropriated by a corrupt local leader. Likewise, she says she remains independent from foreign influences: "I do have close strategic ties with American organizations involved in protecting human rights, with American ambassadors and with officials in the U.S. State Department. (I also have ties with activists in) most of the E.U. and Arab countries. But they are ties among equals; (I am not) their subordinate." Speaking before an audience at the University of Michigan, Karman summed up her belief: "I am a citizen of the world. The Earth is my country, and humanity is my nation."

Citation; Wikipedia 2022