Conflict Resolution: Inspiring Stories

Václav Havel

The president of the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia) from 1989-2003, Havel was a poet and playwright before turning to politics. He became known for his outspoken call for freedom in 1968 when tanks from the Soviet Union invaded the country to suppress a period of political liberalization known as the “Prague Spring.” Havel was banned from theater, but kept producing plays under another name. In 1977 he published a manifesto called Charter 77 that criticized the government for human rights abuses. Over the following years he was frequently imprisoned but never gave up. In 1989 when the communist government collapsed during a non-violent uprising known as the “Velvet Revolution,” Havel was elected president. He famously said, “When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.”

Ken Saro-Wiwa

Ken Saro-Wiwa was the leader of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria, who led a nonviolent campaign against Shell Corporation to stop it from polluting his people’s land. Before becoming a rights activist, he was a famous as a writer and television producer. Since 1958 Shell extracted over $30 billion in oil, polluted the land and destroyed the water sources used by the people. None of the 550,000 Ogoni received compensation. In 1993 Saro-Wiwa gathered 300,000 people to march on behalf of the Ogoni. In response, the military government launched a wave of violence against the Ogoni. In 2005, the military government executed Saro-Wiwa on false charges. The organization that he started the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People still fights for the cause to this day.

Desmond Tutu

Known as the “moral conscience of South Africa” Tutu was bishop of Lesotho and the first black General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. From these positions in the church in the 1960s to 1990s Tutu combated apartheid, the racial segregation of South Africa made law by the white minority government. Tutu advocated equal rights for whites and blacks and petitioned the government to stop forcing black families into black designated regions. He famously convinced the United States and Great Britain to halt investment in South Africa until the racial laws were revoked. In 1994 Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then he was taken on several causes in the name of human rights, including campaigning against HIV, climate change and poverty.

Anwar Sadat

The third president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat famously broke all taboos in the Arab world by visiting neighboring Israel in order to foster a peace accord. At the time, Israel held Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Sadat hoped to broker a peace agreement in return for the land. Sadat went before Israel’s parliament, known as Knesset, appealing for a just peace agreement. Two years later, Sadat and the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, met at Camp David in a negotiation facilitated by United States president Jimmy Carter. Together the two brokered an agreement that led to peace between the two countries, a peace agreement that laid the groundwork for Jordan to make peace with Israel more than a decade later. Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. Sadly three years later, Sadat was assassinated during a parade in Cairo.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Daughter of the general who negotiated Burma’s independence from the British, Aung San Suu Kyi is leader of the National League for Democracy party. She was put under house arrest by the military Junta when she immigrated back to Burma in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother and remained locked behind closed doors for more than 20 years. Despite her house arrest, Suu Kyi has led the opposition to the Burmese dictatorship. In 1990, her party won the country’s general election with almost 60 percent of the national vote. Suu Kyi is devotee to nonviolent protest and her beliefs are highly influenced by Mahatma Ghandi and Buddhist philosophy. On November 13 2010, she was finally released and greeted by a crowd of followers. She continues her quest to democratize Burma. “The quest for democracy in Burma is the struggle of a people to live whole, meaningful lives as free and equal members of the world community. It is part of the unceasing human endeavor to prove that the spirit of man can transcends the flaws of his nature,” Her son said on her behalf before the Nobel Prize Committee.