Kenya: Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai dies
By Staff Writer
Prof Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace laureate and conservation heroine, has died while undergoing treatment in Nairobi.
Officials at her Greenbelt Movement organisation said,the environmentalist and politician died at the Nairobi Hospital at around 10pm on Sunday.
Prof Maathai, 71, succumbed to ovarian cancer, just over a year since she was diagnosed with the disease, in July 2010.
As a political activist, Maathai , is well known for her constant battles with government to protect Kenya’s forests. She will be remembered for her fight against the Former President Moi regime's attempts to build a 60-storey building at Uhuru Park, at the centre of Nairobi city. She next took on powerful individuals in the Moi government who had hived off parts of the Karura forest in the outer fringes of the city.
She joined active politics in 2002 and was elected the Member of Parliament for Tetu, Nyeri District and served as an Assistant Minister in President Kibaki's first government.
Wangari Maathai is internationally recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation. She has addressed the UN on several occasions and spoke on behalf of women at special sessions of the General Assembly for the five-year review of the earth summit. She served on the commission for Global Governance and Commission on the Future. She and the Green Belt Movement have received numerous awards, most notably The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
Prof Maathai started the Green Belt Movement to work with women to improve their livelihoods by increasing their access to resources like firewood for cooking and clean water.
She became a great advocate for better natural resource management practices that are sustainable, equitable and just. Her life’s work was recognized many times all over the world and she received awards, honorary degrees from many universities around the world, culminating with the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was also a celebrated academic having been the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree.
Prof Maathai got her degree in biological sciences from Mount St Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas in 1964 before earning a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh two years later.
Her official profile says that she later pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi (UoN), obtaining a Ph.D in 1971 from the UoN where she also taught veterinary anatomy. She became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor in 1976 and 1977 respectively.