Nobel Peace Prize, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize | featured news

Three women who fought injustice, dictatorship and sexual violence in Liberia and Yemen have received the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in the Norwegian capital.

Africa's first democratically elected female president, a Liberian campaigner against rape and a woman who stood up to Yemen's autocratic regime won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of the importance of women's rights in the spread of global peace. The Norwegian Nobel Committee split the prize between Tawakkul Karman, a leader of anti-government protests in Yemen; Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman to win a free presidential election in Africa; and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia, who campaigned against the use of rape as a weapon in her country's brutal civil war.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded Thursday to Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II.

A record 241 nominations were submitted for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize and the Norwegian jury has now begun the secretive process to select a winner, the panel's spokesman said Tuesday.

Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks has been nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian politician behind the proposal said on Wednesday, a day after the deadline for nominations expired.