Zafar Shayan
Mairead Corrigan is an Irish peace activist, co-founder of Community of Peace People, and cowinner of the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize, with Betty Williams. She was born in 1944 in Northern Ireland and attended a private school until the ages of fourteen. Then started working until she could save money to enroll at Miss Gordons’ Commercial College for a one-year business classes.
In 1960, at the age of 16, Corrigan stared working as a clerk at a local factory and later as a secretary for a beer company. In her free times, she voluntarily helped children. In 1976, when her sister’s children were killed in car accident, whose driver was shot by British troops, she joined Betty Williams’ campaign for peace. Along with Williams, she became the leader of ‘Women for Peace’ movement, which later changed to Community of Peace People. The two women received the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize. Corrigan was the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner before Malala.
Corrigan continued working with Community of Peace People through organizing campaigns, writing articles and advocating non-violent resolution of conflict in Northern Ireland. The organization organized summer camps in various European countries in order to bring young Catholics and Protestants together to know each other.
In 1981, she helped founding The Committee on the Administration of Justice, which works for human rights in Northern Ireland. She traveled to twenty-five countries to promote and teach non-violent means, including the US, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Israel, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Latin America etc. In 1993, along with Betty Williams, she traveled to Thailand to participate in a protest against the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi by the Myanmar government.
Due to her works for peace, she received honorary doctorates from the College of New Rochelle and St. Michael’s College in Vermont. She has also been awarded the 1990 “Pacem in Terris” Peace and Freedom Award, and the 1992 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation of Santa Barbara.
The Nobel Prize: www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1976/corrigan/biographical