2011 Women PeaceMakers Announced

The Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice has recently announced its four outstanding Women PeaceMakers for Fall 2011. These four women hail from Iraq, Haiti, India and Kenya.  

Wahu Kaara of Kenya
An ardent advocate and long-standing peace and political activist, Wahu Kaara has lived through many chapters of Kenya’s history. She has also helped write some of those chapters, making significant contributions to the progress of human rights, women’s rights and democratization in Kenya.

Manjula Pradeep of India
A brazen human rights activist and lawyer, Manjula Pradeep has spent her life defending the rights of India’s women and Dalits, the “untouchables” of the Hindu caste system. Pradeep, aDalit herself, knows intimately the intersectionality of grief and abuse that Dalit women experience at the bottom of all of India’s social hierarchies – caste, class and gender. But she has defied India’s patriarchal and caste-structured society. As the executive director of Navsarjan Trust, a grassroots Dalit rights organization based in northwest India’s Gujarat state, Pradeep is a respected and prominent woman leader of the Dalit movement. 

Claudette Werleigh of Haiti
From literacy education in rural Haiti to her post as Haiti’s first female prime minister and on to secretary general of the Catholic peace movement Pax Christi International, Claudette Werleigh of Haiti has witnessed conflict and worked for peace in all corners of the world, with people from every corner of society. She is a peacemaker at every level.

Rashad Zaydan of Iraq
Dr. Rashad Zaydan of Iraq became a pharmacist to heal people. When her country was torn apart by war, her healing expanded to include the physically emotional, socially and psychologically wounded, particularly Iraq’a women and children. As the founder and head of the development organization Knowledge for Iraqi Women Society (K4IWS), Dr. Zaydan seeks to rebuild the tattered lives of Iraqi widows, women and children through educational, financial, occupational and medical services.

For more information about the Women PeaceMakers and full bios, please click here.