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#NobelPeacePrize

WILPF Congratulates the 2022 Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize 

At a time when the work of the peace community is more critical than ever, WILPF is recognising the work and impact of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winners on the occasion of the official award ceremony in Oslo. 

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  • 3 min
WILPF International Secretariat
10 December 2022

On 10 December, representatives of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates gathered at Oslo City Hall in Norway for the official Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony. 

As one of the oldest feminist peace organisations in the world, WILPF wishes to extend its congratulations to the three winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize: Ales Bialiatski of Belarus, the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) in Ukraine, and the Russian human rights organisation Memorial. 

This prize comes in the midst of challenging times. The number of human rights violations taking place and the inability of legal mechanisms and multilateralism to stop them or protect victims are leaving all of us to face despair and disillusionment. But disillusionment is hugely dangerous to our human rights community; it strips us of the tools we carefully curated over decades and leaves us exposed and vulnerable in a battlefield that is not ours. 

At WILPF, we believe it is our collective role to lift one another from despair, re-centre our common cause of peace, freedom, and dignity for all, and re-strategise so our tools are relevant and effective. We hope the Nobel Peace Prize serves as a motivation to realise this goal. 

The 2022 prize was awarded at the end of a year that brought major threats to world peace and countless human rights abuses in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – the latest act of brutality in Russia’s long history of violence, occupation, war crimes, and human rights violations in the region. 

Each of this year’s laureates has spent years working for peace in the face of abuses perpetrated by Russia and its closest allies.  

Since the mid-1980s, Bialiatski has been leading a pro-democracy movement in Belarus and founded the country’s most prominent human rights organisation. During mass demonstrations in 2020, he helped track people who were detained during protests and raids across Belarus in an effort to seek accountability and justice. 

Memorial was established by a group of Russian human rights activists in 1987, with a mission to provide support to victims of the communist regime. The group maintained a massive archive of Soviet-era crimes and campaigned against rights violations in Chechnya. It was shut down by Russia’s Supreme Court in late 2021. 

CCL is a Ukrainian organisation founded in 2007 to promote human rights and democracy. It has been heavily involved in advocating for Ukraine to become affiliated with the International Criminal Court, and has been documenting Russian war crimes against local civilians since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

Read more about this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureates.  

While we congratulate this year’s winners, we are also reflecting on our own long and storied history with the Nobel Peace Prize!

Read about WILPF pioneers Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch – the second and third women to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize – and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Prize in 2017 in recognition of its efforts to drive progress towards a nuclear-free world. WILPF is a proud international steering group member with ICAN. 

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WILPF International Secretariat

WILPF International Secretariat, with offices in Geneva and New York, liaises with the International Board and the National Sections and Groups for the implementation of WILPF International Programme, resolutions and policies as adopted by the International Congress. Under the direction of the Secretary-General, the Secretariat also provides support in areas of advocacy, communications, and financial operations.

Berit Aasen

Europe Alternate Regional Representative

Berit Aasen is a sociologist by training and has worked at the OsloMet Metropolitan University on Oslo. She has 40 years of experience in research and consultancy in development studies, including women, peace, and security, and in later years in asylum and refugee studies. Berit Aasen joined WILPF Norway five years ago. She is an alternate member of the National Board of WILPF Norway, and representing WILPF Norway in the UN Association of Norway, the Norwegian 1325 network and the Norwegian Women’s Lobby. Berit Aasen has been active in the WILPF European Liaison group and is committed to strengthening WILPF sections and membership both in Europe and relations across continents.

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Melissa Torres

VICE-PRESIDENT

Prior to being elected Vice-President, Melissa Torres was the WILPF US International Board Member from 2015 to 2018. Melissa joined WILPF in 2011 when she was selected as a Delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women as part of the WILPF US’ Practicum in Advocacy Programme at the United Nations, which she later led. She holds a PhD in Social Work and is a professor and Global Health Scholar at Baylor College of Medicine and research lead at BCM Anti-Human Trafficking Program. Of Mexican descent and a native of the US/Mexico border, Melissa is mostly concerned with the protection of displaced Latinxs in the Americas. Her work includes training, research, and service provision with the American Red Cross, the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Centre, and refugee resettlement programs in the U.S. Some of her goals as Vice-President are to highlight intersectionality and increase diversity by fostering inclusive spaces for mentorship and leadership. She also contributes to WILPF’s emerging work on the topic of displacement and migration.

Jamila Afghani

VICE-PRESIDENT

Jamila Afghani is the President of WILPF Afghanistan which she started in 2015. She is also an active member and founder of several organisations including the Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organisation (NECDO). Elected in 2018 as South Asia Regional Representative to WILPF’s International Board, WILPF benefits from Jamila’s work experience in education, migration, gender, including gender-based violence and democratic governance in post-conflict and transitional countries.

Sylvie Jacqueline Ndongmo

PRESIDENT

Sylvie Jacqueline NDONGMO is a human rights and peace leader with over 27 years experience including ten within WILPF. She has a multi-disciplinary background with a track record of multiple socio-economic development projects implemented to improve policies, practices and peace-oriented actions. Sylvie is the founder of WILPF Cameroon and was the Section’s president until 2022. She co-coordinated the African Working Group before her election as Africa Representative to WILPF’s International Board in 2018. A teacher by profession and an African Union Trainer in peace support operations, Sylvie has extensive experience advocating for the political and social rights of women in Africa and worldwide.

WILPF Afghanistan

In response to the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and its targeted attacks on civil society members, WILPF Afghanistan issued several statements calling on the international community to stand in solidarity with Afghan people and ensure that their rights be upheld, including access to aid. The Section also published 100 Untold Stories of War and Peace, a compilation of true stories that highlight the effects of war and militarisation on the region. 

IPB Congress Barcelona

WILPF Germany (+Young WILPF network), WILPF Spain and MENA Regional Representative

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Demilitarisation

WILPF uses feminist analysis to argue that militarisation is a counter-productive and ill-conceived response to establishing security in the world. The more society becomes militarised, the more violence and injustice are likely to grow locally and worldwide.

Sixteen states are believed to have supplied weapons to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2020 with the US supplying 74 % of weapons, followed by Russia. Much of this equipment was left behind by the US military and is being used to inflate Taliban’s arsenal. WILPF is calling for better oversight on arms movement, for compensating affected Afghan people and for an end to all militarised systems.

Militarised masculinity

Mobilising men and boys around feminist peace has been one way of deconstructing and redefining masculinities. WILPF shares a feminist analysis on the links between militarism, masculinities, peace and security. We explore opportunities for strengthening activists’ action to build equal partnerships among women and men for gender equality.

WILPF has been working on challenging the prevailing notion of masculinity based on men’s physical and social superiority to, and dominance of, women in Afghanistan. It recognizes that these notions are not representative of all Afghan men, contrary to the publicly prevailing notion.

Feminist peace​

In WILPF’s view, any process towards establishing peace that has not been partly designed by women remains deficient. Beyond bringing perspectives that encapsulate the views of half of the society and unlike the men only designed processes, women’s true and meaningful participation allows the situation to improve.

In Afghanistan, WILPF has been demanding that women occupy the front seats at the negotiating tables. The experience of the past 20 has shown that women’s presence produces more sustainable solutions when they are empowered and enabled to play a role.