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    September 26, 2011

Kenyan Nobel Laureate Maathai Dies

   VOA News
   Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai participates in a discussion
   at the University of Nairobi in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, March 8,
   2010. Photo: Reuters
   Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai participates in a discussion
   at the University of Nairobi in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, March 8,
   2010.

   Kenya's Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace
   Prize, has died. She was 71.
   The organization she founded, the [1]Green Belt Movement, said in a
   statement that Maathai died Sunday at a Nairobi hospital after a long
   struggle with cancer.
   The Nobel Committee awarded her the peace prize in 2004, citing her
   stand against Kenya's former oppressive government and work to
   encourage women to improve their lives.
   Maathai started the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to help poor women in
   rural communities meet their basic needs for firewood, food and clean
   drinking water through a tree-planting program. The effort later grew
   to include focusing on issues of democracy, human rights, women's
   rights and peace.
   The organization says it has mobilized hundreds of thousands of men and
   women to plant more than 47 million trees.
   Maathai also served as a member of the Kenyan parliament, and as the
   country's deputy environment minister.
   She attended college in the United States during the civil rights era
   in the 1960s, and said that experience inspired her to return home and
   do something positive for the people of Kenya.
   Maathai was one of the founding members of the Nobel Women's
   Initiative, joining other female peace prize winners to support women's
   rights advocacy around the world.

   Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

References

   1. http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/

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