Jody Williams

Jody Williams, born in 1950, American political activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Williams shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize (see Nobel Prizes) with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), an organization she helped found. She led the ICBL’s efforts to promote the Mine Ban Treaty, an international agreement to ban the manufacture, sale, and use of land mines (see Mine). More than 120 nations signed the agreement in 1997.

Williams was born in Rutland, Vermont. She graduated in 1972 from the University of Vermont with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and in 1984 she received a master's degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. Shortly after receiving her master’s degree she became a coordinator of the Nicaragua-Honduras Education Project, for which she organized and led a series of private fact-finding missions in Central America for United States policymakers. From 1986 to 1992 she served as deputy director of Medical Aid for El Salvador, a humanitarian relief organization. Her work in Central America brought to her attention the devastating effects on civilians of land mines placed during civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s.

In 1991 Robert Mueller, head of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, asked Williams to coordinate the establishment of a coalition to ban land mines. In October 1992 Williams and representatives from Vietnam Veterans of America and five other organizations met to formally launch the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Over the next five years Williams built the organization from a core of three people to a network of more than 1,000 private (nongovernmental) organizations in more than 60 countries. Known for her informal but forceful style, Williams wrote and lectured widely on land mines and gradually convinced many of the world's governments to sign the Mine Ban Treaty. In 1995 she coauthored a book titled After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines with American human rights activist Shawn Roberts.

After winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Williams continued to write and speak against land mines. In 1998 she appeared with six other Nobel Peace Prize laureates on a panel to encourage young people to take political action to promote peace.