A 32-year-old mother of three may seem an unlikely leader of the fight to overthrow a president.
But in 2007, Tawakkol Karman took on Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and won.
She had witnessed the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990 and the civil war between the two factions that followed in 1994 in which the North triumphed over the South and its government assumed control over the country.
Karman, a journalist by profession and human rights activist by nature, responded to the political instability and human rights abuses in Yemen by mobilizing others and reporting on injustices. In 2005, she founded the organization Women Journalists Without Chains, which advocates for rights and freedoms and provides media skills to journalists.
In 2007, Karman began organizing weekly protests in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, targeting systemic government repression and calling for inquiries into corruption and other forms of social and legal injustice.
The weekly protests continued until 2011, when Karman redirected protesters to support the Arab Spring.
In January 2011, she took to the streets of the capital along with about 50 other university students, demanding the resignation of Saleh.
She was catapulted into the international spotlight in the winter of that year after being seized from her car and slung into prison. Thousands of people poured into the streets of Sanaa calling for her release.
Since receiving the award, Karman, now 37, has continued to support female journalists and rally Yemenis against government corruption and injustice.
