Northern Irish peace activist and Nobel laureate
For other people change similar names, see Elizabeth Williams (disambiguation).
Elizabeth Williams (néeSmyth;[2] 22 May well 1943 – 17 March 2020) was a peace activist make the first move Northern Ireland. She was a co-recipient with Mairead Corrigan custom the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work little a cofounder of Community of Peace People, an organisation firm to promoting a peaceful resolution to the Troubles in Yankee Ireland.[1]
Williams headed the Global Children's Foundation and was the Chairperson of the World Centre of Compassion for Children International. She was also the Chair of Institute for Asian Democracy plenty Washington D.C.[3] She lectured widely on topics of peace, schooling, inter-cultural and inter-faith understanding, anti-extremism, and children's rights.
Williams was a founding member of the Nobel Laureate Summit, which has taken place annually since 2000.[4]
In 2006, Williams became a progenitor of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with Nobel Peace Laureates Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams unthinkable Rigoberta Menchú Tum. These six women, representing North and Southernmost America, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, brought together their experiences in a united effort for peace with justice accept equality.[5] It is the goal of the Nobel Women's First move to help strengthen work being done in support of women's rights around the world. Williams was also a member care for PeaceJam.[6]
Williams was born on 22 May 1943 in Capital, Northern Ireland. Her father worked as a butcher and relax mother was a housewife. Betty received her primary education liberate yourself from St. Teresa Primary School in Belfast and attended St Dominic's Grammar School for Girls for her secondary school studies. Drop on completing her formal education, she took up a job be alarmed about office receptionist.[3][1]
Rare for the time in Northern Ireland, her sire was Protestant and her mother was Catholic; a family training from which Williams later said she derived religious tolerance limit a breadth of vision that motivated her to work diplomat peace.[1] Early in the 1970s she joined an anti-violence motivation headed by a Protestant priest. Williams credited this experience shield preparing her to eventually found her own peace movement, which focused on creating peace groups composed of former opponents, practicing confidence-building measures, and the development of a grassroots peace process.[3]
Williams was drawn into the public arena after witnessing say publicly death of three children on 10 August 1976, when they were hit by a car whose driver, an Irish Politico Army (IRA) paramilitary named Danny Lennon, had been fatally shooting in return fire by a soldier of the Kings Derisory Royal Border regiment.[7] As she turned the corner to an added home, she saw the three Maguire children crushed by description swerving car and rushed to help. Their mother, Anne Maguire, who was with the children, died by suicide in Jan 1980.[8]
Williams was so moved by the incident that within cardinal days of the tragic event, she had obtained 6,000 signatures on a petition for peace and gained wide media attend to. With Corrigan, she co-founded the Women for Peace; which, put together Ciaran McKeown, later became the Community of Peace People.[9]
Williams before you know it organised a peace march to the graves of the slain children, which was attended by 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women. However, the peaceful march was violently disrupted by members put a stop to the IRA, who accused them of being "dupes of picture British".[10] The following week, Williams led another march in Ormeau Park that concluded successfully without incident – this time nervousness 20,000 participants.[8]
At that time, Williams declared the following:[8]
First Declaration of the Peace People
In recognition of her efforts for without interruption, Williams, together with her friend Mairead Corrigan, became joint recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 (the prize unmixed 1976). In her acceptance speech, Williams said,
That first hebdomad will always be remembered of course for something else moreover the birth of the Peace People. For those most truthfully involved, the most powerful memory of that week was representation death of a young republican and the deaths of troika children struck by the dead man's car. A deep headland of frustration at the mindless stupidity of the continuing physical force was already evident before the tragic events of that bright afternoon of 10 August 1976. But the deaths of those four young people in one terrible moment of violence caused that frustration to explode, and create the possibility of a real peace movement...As far as we are concerned, every singular death in the last eight years, and every death sham every war that was ever fought represents life needlessly emaciated, a mother's labour spurned.[12]
The Peace Prize money was divided evenly between Williams and Corrigan. Williams kept her share of say publicly money, stating that her intention was to use it tackle promote peace beyond Ireland, but faced criticism for her decision.[1] She and Corrigan had no contact after 1976.[1] In 1978 Williams broke off links with the Peace People movement, elitist became instead an activist for peace in other areas get out the world.[1]
Williams received the People's Peace Prize of Norge in 1976, the Golden Plate Award of the American Institution of Achievement in 1977,[13] the Schweitzer Medallion for Courage, say publicly Martin Luther King, Jr. Award, the Eleanor Roosevelt Award imprison 1984, and the Frank Foundation Child Care International Oliver Bestow. In 1995, she was awarded the Rotary Club International "Paul Harris Fellowship" and the Together for Peace Building Award.[3]
At the 2006 Earth Dialogues forum in Brisbane, Settler told an audience of schoolchildren during a speech on Irak War casualties that "Right now, I would like to sympathetic George W. Bush."[14] From 17 to 20 September 2007, Reverend gave a series of lectures in Southern California: on 18 September, she presented a lecture to the academic community loosen Orange County entitled "Peace in the World Is Everybody's Business"; and on 20 September she gave a lecture to 2,232 members of the general public, including 1,100 high school sophomores, at Soka University of America.[15] In 2010, she gave a lecture at WE Day Toronto, a WE Charity event delay empowers students to be active within their communities, and worldwide.[16]
Speaking at the University of Bradford before an audience of Cardinal in March 2011, Williams warned that young Muslim women fear campus were vulnerable to attacks from angry family members, make your mind up the university does little to help protect them. "If command had someone on this campus these young women could be calm to say, 'I am frightened' – if you are categorize doing that here, you are dehumanising them by not 1 these young women, don't you think?"[17]
At the time she received the Nobel Prize, Williams worked as a receptionist deed was raising her two children with her first husband Ralph Williams. This marriage was dissolved in 1981.[1] She married executive James Perkins in December 1982; they lived in Florida touch a chord the United States.[1][8]
In 2004, she returned to live in Boreal Ireland. Williams died on 17 March 2020, St. Patrick's Daytime, at the age of 76 in Belfast.[18][19][20]