How Ellen Johnson Sirleaf earned the 2011 Nobel Prize for peace
Sirleaf inherited her light skin colour from her maternal grandfather, a German trader. But she maintains her family was impeccably native. Married at 17, she had four sons, then went with her family to America, where she studied business at Madison Business College, Wisconsin, and worked in a chemist. On her return, she got a job at the Treasury. Her husband was abusive and she divorced him. As she rose in government, she became increasingly critical of the ruling class and its reluctance to share power, which may have saved her life when the government was overthrown.
She was imprisoned in the 1980s for criticising the military regime of Samuel Doe and then backed Charles Taylor's rebellion before falling out with him and being charged with treason after he became president. In addition, She twice went into exile to escape her legal problems with the governments of the day.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born 29 October 1938. She is the 24th and current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d'état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions.
She was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. Sirleaf is the first and currently only elected female head of state in Africa.
Forbes magazine named Sirleaf as the 51st most powerful woman in the world in 2006. In 2010, the Newsweek listed her as one of the ten best leaders in the world. In the same year the Time magazine counted her among the top ten female leaders. That same year also,The Economist called her "arguably the best president the country has ever had."
A longtime politician, Sirleaf, 66, now has to contend with putting her country back together after a 14-year civil war that left the capital Monrovia in near ruins. She must also deal with government mismanagement that has all but destroyed Liberia's economy.
She was imprisoned in the 1980s for criticising the military regime of Samuel Doe and then backed Charles Taylor's rebellion before falling out with him and being charged with treason after he became president. In addition, She twice went into exile to escape her legal problems with the governments of the day.
Sirleaf considers education her big achievement . According to her : "Most of our young people were denied an education during the many years of conflict. We enforced compulsory primary education, and enrollment in public schools more than doubled. We stressed girls' education because girls have been neglected for so long. The most permanent thing is an education. They can steal your car, they can burn your house, but nobody can take away from you what you have in your head, ."
Her long tenure as a peace maker and welfare struggler for her country fellows was properly appreciated when the Nobel peace prize committee announced her as one of the three Laureates saying that: The Nobel Peace Prize 2011 was awarded jointly to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work".
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