The death of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmentalist Wangari Maathai is a great loss not only for Kenya and its people but also Africa and the world as a whole. As the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaigns to save the forests in Kenya, Maathai represented/represents the force that fights against social injustice. In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement to plant trees to prevent environmental and social conditions that hurt poor and marginalized people, especially women and children, in rural Kenya.
Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, had to endure so many threats to her life in her devotion to save Africa's forests. She will be remembered as a strong human soul that devoted her life for the social justice of the marginalized not only in Kenya and Africa but also the whole world.
May you rest in perfect peace, Maathai!
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