Three champions of women's rights were?awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Friday to honor their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace building work.

Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, announced the decision on Friday that President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee and prominent Yemen activist Tawakkul Karman will share the prize this year.

"We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society," Jagland said.

"I received the news through my special assistant and it is indeed an honor. I am accepting it on behalf of the Liberian people. Each of them has contributed to this peace," the Liberian leader Sirleaf?said in a brief statement issued in Monrovia.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf [File photo]

This is to highlight an incredibly important issue all over the world but especially in Africa and in the Arab world."

Sirleaf is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an international network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.

Leymah Roberta Gbowee, 39, is an African peace activist responsible for organising a peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003.

Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee?[File photo]

Tawakkul Karman is a Yemeni politician who is a senior member of Al-Islah[2] and a human rights activist who heads the group Women Journalists Without Chains that she created in 2005.?

Tawakkul Karman of Yemen?[File photo]