Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman joins Transparency International

Transparency International is honoured to announce today that Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman has accepted our Board’s invitation to become a member of our Advisory Council.

Tawakkol Karman is a Yemeni journalist, politician and human rights activist who heads the group "Women Journalists without Chains". Transparency International started its collaboration with her in June 2009, when “Women Journalists without Chains” became a founding member of the “Yemeni Team for Transparency & Integrity” – a coalition of five non governmental organisations who signed a national contact group agreement with Transparency International.

Tawakkol Karman last year received – together with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee – the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent struggle for the safety of women and women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.

"Tawakkol Karman has been a key figure for change in Yemen. Transparency International will greatly benefit from her local and regional expertise on corruption in the Middle East given that corruption was a major driver for the uprisings that became known as the Arab spring last year” said Peter Eigen, Chairman of the Advisory Council.

Transparency International has five National Chapters as well as several contact groups in the MENA region. In its 2010 report “The good governance challenge: Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine” Transparency International had found that the four countries have in common very weak integrity systems, containing major gaps in legal anti-corruption provisions and showcasing an even more worrisome lack of commitment to effective anti-corruption practices.  

Background

The Advisory Council gathers a distinguished group of individuals with outstanding backgrounds in government, the corporate sector, international institutions and the international anti-corruption movement in order to develop recommendations for the work of the Transparency International. At the moment the advisory council has more than 30 members.

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Transparency International is the civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption