This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three women on Saturday: Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, women’s rights activist Leymah Gbowee, and Yemeni campaigner Tawakkul Karman. Opening the ceremony, the head of the Nobel selection committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, issued a note of warning to oppressive leaders in the Middle East.

Thorbjorn Jagland, Nobel Committee chairman: “The leaders in Yemen and in Syria who murder their people to retain their own power should take note of the following: mankind’s quest for freedom and human rights will never stop.”

The first to accept the peace prize was Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman who was freely elected as a head of state in Africa.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: “I am particularly honored to be a successor to the several sons and one daughter of Africa who have stood on this stage: Chief Albert John Luthuli, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, Kofi Annan, Anwar al-Sadat, Wangari Maathai, Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Bunche—Americans of African descent.”