On International Women's Day 2001, International Alert and the United Nations Development Fund for Women presented the first Millennium Peace Prize for Women. The award was the first of its kind to specifically honour the vital role that women play in peacebuilding and the indispensable contributions that women have made to resolving and preventing violent conflict.

The Millennium Peace Prize was inspired by the hundreds of testimonies of the incredible and often unrecognised efforts of women who are working to bring peace to war-affected communities world-wide. The recognition of women’s international peacebuilding work has been very poor - in its 100 years, only 10 of 106 Nobel Peace Prize winners have been women or women’s organisations. 

The Millennium Peace Prize celebrates the courage and achievements of the winners but also acknowledges the work of women worldwide, who are striving for peace and justice in communities and across political, religious and ethnic divides.

The six winners who have made a significant and substantial contribution to peace at a local, national, regional or global level were:

Individual Winners

Flora Brovina - Kosovo/a

Flora Brovina is president of the Albanian Women's League of Kosovo/a, a non-political organisation she founded in 1992. The League was set up to promote and protect the human rights of ethnic Albanian women. Flora has always emphasised the importance of understanding and tolerance across ethnic groups in Yugoslavia. In April 1999, she was arrested by the Serbian authorities and sentenced to 12 years in prison, charged with committing acts of terrorism against Yugoslavia. Following international pressure and the change of government, Flora was released in November 2000. Flora is a pediatrician and a world-renowned poet. In all of her activities, she has demonstrated extraordinary grace and courage.

"The League of Albanian women that I founded protested against the war, took care of women, children elderly, the forcibly displaced people. For this reason I was sentenced to 12 years in prison from the Milosevic's regime...I was released, but in Serbia there are 600 Albanians still hostages of war. I don't feel free unless they are released…They are as much of terrorist as me, because Milosevic's regime sentenced me for terrorism. The only weapon was my pen and my stethoscope…Global peace can be secured only with individual collective units. Let's hope and work for the happiness and the well-being of each one, to have more love and trust in our heart for ourselves and other." Flora Brovina

Hina Jilani (left) & Asma Jahangir (right) - Pakistan

"My guest, Asma Jahangir, has been met with death threats in response to her work with Pakistan’s women’s and human rights movements. Last week she was one of six winners of the new Millennium Peace Prize for Women…" (excerpt from Terry Gross, Anchor and Host of CNN, Asia Today).

For the past 20 years sisters Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani have been at the forefront of the movements for women's rights, human rights and peace in Pakistan. They established the first all women's law firm in Pakistan and were founder members of the Women's Action Forum, a campaigning pressure group for women's rights. They also set up the first free legal aid centre in Pakistan, fiercely defending and providing legal representation for those whose human rights have been violated. In 1998 the UN Commission on Human Rights appointed Asma as Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Arbitrary and Summary Executions. Last year, Hina was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the situation of Human Rights Defenders.

"I take this award on behalf of the women activists of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, because we have worked together for peace. It cannot be two women, it was all of us who have worked together. We have shivered with terror at the same time. We have had sleepless nights together when there has been eminent danger of violence. We share the same dreams. The dreams where we do not want to see hunger and death...I will be honoured on behalf of all of you to take this prize to India to share it with my sisters. I would like to recall my sisters from India, who came to Pakistan at a time when we were certain that war would break out. It was a moment of great tension, but they did come. And we did receive them most warmly, openly, despite the hawks on both sides watching us. We sang songs of peace. The leader of their delegation, Narmila Desh Pandey said, let us forget for a moment that we are citizens of Pakistan or India, let us for a moment think that we are citizens of the world. And it was because we could transcend national boundaries that we could come to a resolution of the conflict. It is only when you are able to do that, will you find a resolution to any conflict at all. It is also my belief that women have to come forward in the negotiations of peace. We have a different message to give. We have our own discourse, our own culture. Bring women forward and we will guarantee you peace…Today women's leadership will give it, can give it, and must give it." (Asma Jahangir)

Veneranda Nzambazamariya - Rwanda

"The winners, like Nzambazamariya, had built peace through resistance to violence… holding the fabric of society together and rebuilding trust across communities…" (UN Integrated Regional Information Network).

Veneranda Nzambazamariya was an outstanding leader in Rwanda's women's movement. Immediately after the genocide in 1994, Veneranda was among the handful of women who courageously urged Rwandan women to rise above ethnic differences and come together to rebuild the country. She was a founding member of Reseau des Femmes and Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe, two dynamic women's organisations in Rwanda. She was equally active in promoting women's issues throughout the continent and was a committed member of the Women's Committee for Peace and Development. In a tribute to Veneranda earlier this year, the members of the Committee said "she always stressed that as people in the region we cannot afford to divide ourselves." Veneranda died in a Kenya Airways crash in January 2000. Judith Kanakuze (right photograph) from Reseau des Femmes received the award on behalf of Veneranda.

"Nzambazamariya Veneranda deserves this peace prize because of the peace process she set in motion in the wake of the genocide that Rwanda experienced in 1994…Through her advocacy efforts in favour of a greater role for women, she endeavoured to have women heard at decision-making levels. She sought to have women's voices taken into account on behalf of a logic of life, not a logic of death. Veneranda strenuously denounced violence inflicted on women and injustices done to children deprived of their parents. She denounced the immoral debt that went to purchase arms instead of infrastructure and social services that could lessen women's load. Veneranda's work shall continue in Rwanda and throughout the world even after her premature death…I would like to close by citing what she would always say wherever she went. She used to tell Rwandan women, "Let yourselves be consoled, you have been sacrificed by systems it is necessary to change. Unite so as to transform problems into opportunities for action."

Winning Organisations

Leitana Nehan Women's Development Agency -
Papua New Guinea

Leitana Nehan have been key to the process of peace negotiations and reconstruction in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea since the mid-1990s. In 1992, under the slogan "Women Weaving Bougainville Together," they began rebuilding the trust that had eroded between neighbours and within communities. By building relationships between young people, their workshops have helped heal the deep rifts caused by the war. They have challenged the police to shift their attitudes and focus their concerns on the issue of violence against women, for the government to allocate funds for public awareness and studies concerning the root causes of violence and for churches to openly condemn violence and oppression against women.

Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres - Colombia

Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres is a coalition of women's organisations working towards conflict resolution in war-torn Colombia. The violence in Colombia is particularly disabling to women, inhibiting and often preventing their full participation in social, cultural and political life. The Ruta Pacifica movement acts as an important national referee in this conflict zone, ensuring that women's alternative plans for peace and co-existence reach the ears of national and international policy-makers. They are best known for their ability to mobilise public marches condemning the violence that pervades the country.

"Holding public marches against violence, they have become one of the strongest voices for peace in Latin America, daring to stand up to ruthless paramilitary gunmen." (Olivia Ward, European Bureau Chief, Toronto Star).

The demonstrations are primarily attended by thousands of rural women who march to the most violent regions of the country to create public support for peace and to promote the idea that violence is not the only option to resolving social conflict.

"Colombia is a country at war. It has been at war for more than 40 years, producing human rights violations, violations of international humanitarian law, suffering, pain and bad governance. We women recreate life, we lead peaceful revolutions, without bullets, without antipersonnel mines, without destroying a country's infrastructure or its environment, without massacres, disappeared people, threats or torture. We women have the potential to transform the culture of war that reigns in our country. We have traversed the regions of Colombia from north to south, from south to north, exorcising fear and telling the warlords that women will not bear more male and female children for war, that we will not allow a single drop of food to leave our hands and our wombs for war, and that our bodies are not spoils of war. This prize is also a prize for women who seek out their disappeared, the women who hope that their kidnapped relatives will be returned. It is a prize for the mothers of the soldiers who are being held by the guerrilla movement. It is a prize for displaced women, for female peace activists, all of whom, from different perspectives, are applying pressure for a negotiated solution to private and public warfare. But we dedicate this prize above all to the People's Women's Organisation of Barrancabermeja, who, due to their pacifist, civil-society viewpoint, are currently a military objective of the paramilitary forces. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the women of UNIFEM and International Alert for their international work to make it possible for peace to be written with a feminine outlook, without victors or vanquished."

Women in Black - International

Women in Black is a world-wide network of women committed to ending war, violence and militarism. Women in Black is a politics of resistance that has inspired women in different parts of the world to organise actions and protests. Demonstrations are women only and usually take the form of women wearing black, standing in a public place in silent, non-violent vigils. Women in Black was started in Israel in 1988 by Israeli, Palestinian and American women protesting against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The movement soon spread globally. Women in Black, Belgrade accepted the Millennium Peace Prize for Women on behalf of the world-wide movement. Since the first public protests in October 1991, Women in Black, Belgrade have organised over 400 demonstrations against military aggression and were one of the earliest and consistent public voices against the Milosevic regime. Women in Black, Belgrade publicly denounced, at significant risk and personal cost, the policies that have victimised the civilian populations of the Balkans. They have published thousands of leaflets, bulletins and books, and organised petitions and demonstrations to bring to the world's attention atrocities committed against civilians during the war. Stasa Zajovic accepted the award from Women in Black, Belgrade.

"Our international network of solidarity includes our sisters in peace from Israel, Palestine, Italy Spain, India, Colombia, and our sisters in peace from Kosova...We receive the Millennium Peace Prize as recognition of our international Women in Black network. Recognition of our non-violent resistance to war and militarism, recognition of our disloyalty to all nation states, our civil disobedience against war. This prize is also recognition to our alternative women's politics outside establishments and official spheres. We are women acting on the streets. That's precisely why this prize instilled the hope in the possibility of transforming international institutions. It builds confidence that international politics begins to take into consideration women's experiences and experiences of others, that will take into consideration alternate solutions offered by women. Unfortunately, the international community paid more attention to the voices who generate wars in Balkans and elsewhere. It is our opinion the UN must become a place where different voices can be heard. Voices of civilians, voices of women and anti-war activists. This prize is an honourable gesture to cherish our grassroots movement, Women in Black." Stasa Zojovic

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