Betty Williams life and biography

Betty Williams (born 22 May 1943) is a co-recipient with Mairead Corrigan of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work as a cofounder of Community of Peace People, an organisation dedicated to promoting a peaceful resolution to The Troubles in Northern Ireland. She heads the Global Children's Foundation and is the President of the World Centre of Compassion for Children International. She is also the Chair of Institute for Asian Democracy in Washington D.C. and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Nova Southeastern University. In 2006, Williams was one of the founders of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchu Tum. Six women representing North America and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa decided to bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality. It is the goal of the Nobel Women's Initiative to help strengthen work being done in support of women's rights around the world.

An unlikely advocate for children worldwide, Betty Williams turned a tragic experience into a message of hope and duty for future generations. Born in 1943 in divided Northern Ireland, Williams was a receptionist and young mother when she witnessed the deaths of three children in a high-speed pursuit of IRA fugitive Danny Lennon in 1976. Lennon was fleeing the police in West Belfast when he was shot, leaving his driverless car swerving violently. Williams, with her own child in her car, witnessed Lennon's vehicle strike a local woman, Anne Maguire, and her two sons and baby daughter. Haunted by the very real result of Northern Ireland's conflict, Williams worked with Maguire's sister Mairead Corrigan to draw up a petition for peace. Within two days, they had over 6,000 signatures, and they and reporter Ciaran McKeown founded the Community for Peace People, a group dedicated to political protest against the war. A week later, the Community united 35,000 people in a protest of the children's deaths and for peace in Northern Ireland. For their dramatic declaration against their nation's pain, Williams and Corrigan received the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, she has served on numerous organizations for justice and children's protections, including the Global children's Foundation, the World Centers of Compassion for Children International, the Institute of Asian Democracy, and the Nobel Women's initiative. The Peace People continue to serve the people and especially the children of Northern Ireland.

Quotations

"We have a simple message to the world from this movement for Peace.
We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society.
We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, our lives at home, at work, and at play to be lives of joy and Peace.
We recognize that to build such a society demands dedication, hard work, and courage.
We recognize that there are many problems in our society which are a source of conflict and violence.
We recognize that every bullet fired and every exploding bomb make that work more difficult.
We reject the use of the bomb and the bullet and all the techniques of violence.
We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbours, near and far, day in and day out, to build that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning."
-- Declaration of the Peace People

"Compassion is more important than intellect in calling forth the love that the work of peace needs, and intuition can often be a far more powerful searchlight than cold reason."

"We know that this insane and immoral imbalance of priorities cannot be changed overnight: we also know that it will not be changed without the greatest struggle, the incessant struggle to get the human race to stop wasting its vast resources on arms, and start investing in the people who must live out their lives on the planet we share, east and west, north and south. And that struggle must be all the greater because it has to be an unarmed, a nonviolent struggle, and requires more courage and more persistence than the courage to squeeze triggers or press murderous buttons. Men must not only end war, they must begin to have the courage not even to prepare for war."

Read more