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Jody Williams: The woman who waged war on land mines
(CNN) -- Jody Williams emerged from her two-story wooden home in the hills of Vermont on the morning of October 10 in a black tank top, jeans and bare feet. Only hours before, she had learned that she and her International Campaign to Ban Landmines would share the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to eradicate the deadly devices.
Journalists were swarming Williams' home, eager to meet the latest peace prize winner. But, true to form, Williams used the occasion not to bask in the glow of having received the world's most coveted prize, but to blast the president of the United States.
"I think it's tragic that President Clinton does not want to be on the side of humanity," Williams said of man she calls a "weenie" for refusing to endorse the land mine ban signed by 121 countries in December. Williams was one of the leading forces behind the treaty.
Video: Profile of Jody Williams from "Nobel '97," a CNN International special
Had the president called to congratulate her, the press corps wanted to know? No, she said.
"It's easier to ring the winners of the Super Bowl, because he is going to get a rah-rah testosterone answer," she told reporters. "If he calls me he is going to get something different."
Bill Clinton later sent Williams a letter congratulating her while repeating his position that any land mine treaty must provide some exceptions. And Williams said even though she doesn't expect one, she would accept an invitation to the White House if it were offered.
While the cantankerous Williams, 47, may seem a little rough around the edges compared to some of her Peace Prize predecessors -- like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa -- she shares with them a lifelong commitment to the disadvantaged.
"I have a deaf schizophrenic brother that people were mean to when I was young," she told The Independent of London. "I couldn't understand why people would be mean to him because he was deaf. That translated into wanting to stop bullies being mean to...people, just because they are weak."
With the help of the Internet, Williams has managed to do in six years what dozens of powerful organizations, including the United Nations, had been unable to do in dozens. Those who know Williams, credit her doggedness and resolve.
WIlliams speaks on the
dangers of land mines
229K/21 sec. AIFF or WAV sound Williams is "an extraordinarily determined individual," Physicians for Human Rights deputy director Susannah Sirkin told The New York Times. "She is fearless. She has never been reluctant to stand in front of a general or world leader with a conviction that she was right on this issue, and tell them what needs to be done. "Sirkin added.
Fluent in Spanish, she began protesting U.S. policy in Central America, leading fact-finding delegations to Nicaragua and Honduras. On those trips, she first learned of the dangers of land mines, meeting children who had lost limbs to the weapons.After earning a master's degree in international affairs, Williams was working for a temporary agency in Washington in 1981 when someone handed her a leaflet in the subway which launched her career as a political activist.
A decade later, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, 1991, Williams attended a meeting in Washington at the offices of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, called by her friend Robert Muller, the organization's president. That gathering yielded a new branch of the foundation: the ICBL.
"When we began, we were just three people sitting in a room. It was utopia. None of us thought we would ever ban land mines. I never thought it would happen in just six years," Williams told The Boston Globe.
ICBL is now represented by more than 1,000 non-governmental organizations in more than 60 nations. During a September meeting in Oslo, Norway, as the world mourned ICBL supporter Princess Diana, 89 nations adopted the committee's plan to outlaw land mine production and destroy all existing devices. As of mid-November, the ICBL said 117 governments had agreed to endorse the document to be signed in Ottawa, Canada, this month.
Williams' remarkable success seems to have exceeded even her own ambitious expectations.
"It's breathtaking what you can do when you set a goal and put all your energy into it," she told the Christian Science Monitor. "I think you have to believe you're right. You say, 'This is what we're going to achieve, and this is how we're going to do it,' And if people get upset about it, tough."
Tough, indeed.
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Related stories:
- Peace through e-mail: Wired activists find strength in cyberspace
- Landmines: The hidden scourge
- Anti-land mine conference opens - December 10, 1997
- Anti-land mine activists win Nobel Peace Prize - October 10, 1997
Related sites:
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- Press release from the Nobel Foundation announcing winners of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize
- The International Campaign to Ban Landmines -- Information from one of leading organizations in the effort to secure a worldwide ban on land mines, including the text of the treaty to ban land mines drafted to be signed in December.
- Land mines: A deadly inheritance -- part of UNICEF's recent report, "Impact of Armed Conflict on Children," explaining how land mines hurt children throughout the world.
- Ban Land Mines Project - an extensive list of links to articles on land mines and other sites devoted to the issue from the Canada-based Physicians for Global Survival.
- The Humanitarian Foundation of People Against Landmines - land mine information from an organization dedicated to removing land mines from Angola.
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