Peace has become, today more than ever, a fundamental challenge for our global society. But peace is not built in a vacuum, peace is always the result of justice. Not of an ideal or utopian justice, never attainable, but of a real, human justice, of a justice built day by day, consisting in the respect and guarantee of the most basic rights of each person. award In a way, this is the struggle that has united the three women who have just been awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a 72-year-old Liberian, made history in 2005 when she became the first woman to be elected head of state on the African continent. In that year she assumed power in her country, which was ravaged by civil wars that left 250,000 people dead between 1989 and 2003. Her inheritance was, therefore, a Liberia with a destroyed Economics , without infrastructure or social fabric, and with a generation of young people (more than 20,000 demobilized guerrillas) whose childhood and Education were robbed by the conflict. In the face of this dramatic status, her goal was to promote national reconciliation, establish the instructions of peace, recover the authority of the elders and the law, and fight resolutely against corruption. An economist, trained at Harvard, she has been able to combine her professional work with her role as mother of four children and grandmother of eight grandchildren. Her image has been very important for millions of African women who are the breadwinners of their families. And she will be even more so now.

The Liberian president shares her award with fellow Liberian Leymah Gbowee, who has been her teaching assistant and right-hand woman for several years. Gbowee, 39, is known for organizing the peace movement that ended Liberia's second civil war in 2003, which led to the democratic election of Johnson Sirleaf.

Tawakul Karman, a Yemeni politician and human rights activist, is the leader of the "Women Journalists Without Chains" group , created in 2005. Mother of three children, she has fought, and still fights, for justice in her country. She has denounced on the front line, both before and during the 'Arab Spring', the lack of democracy and opportunities in Yemen.

The Norwegian high school highlighted in his argument the relevance of the fact that three women hold this year's Nobel Peace Prize. I believe that they are also united by the fact that, in the face of extremely difficult and dramatic circumstances, they have not lost hope in a more just and humane society. This has been the driving force of their struggle and their great contribution to peace.