Three Nobel Peace Prize laureates stood among the trees of Nairobi’s Karura Forest on Tuesday, shovels in hand, planting saplings in the soil that Professor Wangari Maathai once fought to protect. Dr. Shirin Ebadi of Iran, Oleksandra Matviichuk of Ukraine, and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia joined Wanjira Maathai and a gathering of emerging women activists from across the world to mark Wangari Maathai Day and Africa Environment Day — a commemoration as much about the future as the past.
The event carried deep symbolic weight. Karura Forest is where Professor Maathai and her supporters were beaten by hired thugs in 1999 while trying to stop illegal construction on public land. Today it stands as a thriving urban forest — a living testament to her decades of environmental activism and her founding of the Green Belt Movement, which planted more than 51 million trees across Kenya.
A Global Movement, Rooted in Kenya
Tuesday’s gathering was part of the Rooted & Rising initiative, convened by the Nobel Women’s Initiative and the Institute on Gender, Law, and Transformative Peace at CUNY School of Law, in partnership with the Wangari Maathai Foundation and the Green Belt Movement. The programme was designed to connect established Nobel laureates with the next generation of women environmental and human rights defenders.
Organisers said the initiative responds to a worsening global landscape: rising armed conflict, mounting threats against land and environmental defenders, and sustained rollbacks of women’s rights across multiple regions. For the laureates in attendance, the connection between environmental protection, peace, and women’s rights is not incidental — it is the core of their life’s work.
The Voices Behind the Movement
Dr. Shirin Ebadi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her advocacy on behalf of women, children, and political prisoners in Iran, founded the Defenders of Human Rights Center before being forced into exile. A former judge and prolific author, she has continued her campaign internationally for decades and was a co-founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative in 2006, alongside Jody Williams and Wangari Maathai herself.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, whose Centre for Civil Liberties was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, has dedicated herself to documenting war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine and building international accountability for those crimes. Her presence at Karura drew an explicit line between environmental destruction, armed conflict, and the targeting of civil society activists.
Leymah Gbowee, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Liberia, is renowned for leading the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement — a nonviolent campaign of prayer, protest, and political pressure that helped end Liberia’s devastating civil war. She has since championed grassroots women’s movements globally, with a focus on leadership development and conflict resolution.
Joining them was Wanjira Maathai, daughter of Professor Wangari Maathai and Managing Director for Africa and Global Partnerships at the World Resources Institute. She chairs the Wangari Maathai Foundation and previously led the Green Belt Movement, carrying forward her mother’s legacy of grassroots environmental and democratic leadership.
Honouring a Legacy
Professor Wangari Maathai, who died in 2011, remains the only African woman to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to her in 2004. Her recognition came not just for tree-planting, but for understanding that environmental degradation, poverty, and political oppression are intertwined — and that women, empowered at the grassroots level, are central to addressing all three.
As the laureates pressed soil around new saplings in the forest she saved, the message of Wangari Maathai Day was clear: the struggle she began is far from over. Across the world, women continue to put their lives on the line for land, for climate, for peace — and the next generation is rising to meet that call.
