on Kenyan Peace Nobel Prize Winner Wangari Maathai: Congratulations by European Green Party Council

The Council of the European Green Party, united in Dublin, Ireland, sends its warmest congratulations to Peace Nobel Prize winner Wangari Mathaai.

 The 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to the Kenyan Vice-Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife, one of the most outstanding activists on Green as well as Human Rights’ issues, is a just tribute to a woman who, through peaceful initiatives, courage and determination, has worked throughout all her life to ensure that the values of justice, equal rights for women, the respect of fundamental human rights and the respect for the environment prevail.

 We European Greens, who have worked with Wangari Maathai over the years, are proud to see that her struggle has received global acknowledgement after having been appreciated by women and men at grass roots level for whom and with whom she has strived incessantly.

 In a time of neoliberal economic globalization the awarding of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to an African women who all her life has been struggling to preserve the environment, to shape the economy in order for it to be ecologically and socially sustainable, and to have women have a say in her country’s and her continents’ politics, is a sign of world-wide recognition of the necessity to combine human rights issues with ecological and economic topics.

 Thank you, Wangari, for your struggle, for your thoughts and ideas, for you energy and for your laughs – and keep it up!