Maathai awarded another peace prize!

Environmentalist Prof. Wangari Maathai is the winner of his year’s Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development just a year after she won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Peace.

The announcement was made on Sunday by Delhi Chief Minister and Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust Secretary, Ms Sheila Dikshit.

Maathai will be the 19th recipient of the prize whose winners include Afghanistan’s President Mohammmed Karzai, who was conferred last year.

The announcement comes at a time when Maathai, the Tetu Member of Parliament in Kenya, is fighting a battle of a lifetime with a view to redeem her popularity which is currently at an all-time low.

Though celebrated abroad Maathai is highly vilified at home by his kinsmen for what they term as deliberate betrayal of their own (President Mwai Kibaki) by failing to take up an assistant ministerial post few weeks after 2005 referendum in which the draft constitution was rejected by a resounding majority.

Tetu constituency borders President Kibaki’s and many would have expected Maathai to be at the forefront in giving an unquestionable backing to his administration. Failing to do so has greatly incensed members of Kibaki’s inner circle most of who come from the region.

Due to her liberal stand, she has become an object of political ridicule and political analysts have put her among the top Mps on their way out of parliament.

In her speech, Dikshiy said Maathai, the President of Economic, Social and Cultural Centre of African Union, was instrumental in the environment protection movement in the continent, and was at the fore front of planting millions of trees, and risking arrest.

Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace” and was the first African woman to get the prize. She has, however, attracted much criticism back home for failing to use her position as a laureate to broker peace among warring ethnic groups in the country.

Of late, Kenya has been characterized by ethnic-based skirmishes in which tens of people have lost their lives while thousands have been rendered homeless. The worst hit areas are Kuresoi in North Rift as well as Mathare and Kibera slums in Nairobi.

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