Remembering Nobel Peace Prize Winner Jody Williams
By Jason Sibert
With the 2020 presidential election a little over a week behind us, it seems like the media talks of nothing but political parties, political candidates, past and future elections, and the way this or that group voted.
However, the importance of pressure groups that push our politics in a particular direction can’t be stressed enough. Twenty-eight years ago (1992) Jody Williams helped found the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She served as founding coordinator of the organization from 1992 to 1998. ICBL formed when six other organizations – Handicap International, Medico International, Mines Advisory Group, Physicians for Human Rights, and Vietnam Veterans of America – banded together. Eventually, 1,300 organizations from 90 countries would join the ICBL. The organization eventually achieved its goal of an international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines during diplomatic conferences held in Oslo in 1997 – the Ottawa Treaty. The treaty was signed by more than 100 countries. In the next 10 years, 133 countries signed Ottawa, the exceptions were landmine producing countries such as China, Russia, and the United States. Williams lectured widely on the dangers of land mines, publicizing the presence of tens of millions of unexploded land mines in more than 70 countries. She was coauthor of After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines (1995), which examines the socioeconomic impact of land-mine contamination in four countries, and coeditor of Banning Landmines: Disarmament, Citizen Diplomacy, and Human Security (2008). In 1997, Williams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the third American woman to receive the a prize.
Williams earned a degree in International Relations from the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in 1984. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Vermont in 1972. In addition, Williams has built an academic career. Since 2007, she’s served as the Same and Cele Keeper Professor in Peace and Social Justice at the University of Houston. Before that (2003) she was a Distinguishing Visiting Professor of Global Justice at the college.
Jason Sibert is the Executive Director of the Peace Economy Project
