From Peace To Politics

By Carolyn Sayre

Human-rights activist Rigoberta Menchu says she plans to run for president of Guatemala this fall. If elected, she will be the country's first female head of state, as well as the first Maya to hold the office. Menchu is no stranger to accomplishment. In 1992 she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work defending indigenous peoples. She wouldn't be the first Peace Prize winner to make the leap to politics.

THE MEDIATOR

Lester Bowles Pearson is best known as Canada's 14th Prime Minister. But before that he was a 1957 Nobel laureate, winning for work at the U.N. that helped diffuse the Suez crisis.

UNION LEADER

Workers-rights advocate Lech Walesa won the Peace Prize in 1983 for co-founding the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union. Seven years later, he was elected President of Poland.

FREEDOM FIGHTER

In 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected President of South Africa. Just a year earlier, he had received a Nobel for helping bring about the end of apartheid.

HE STARTED SMALL

Nicknamed "banker to the poor," Muhammad Yunus will enter politics under the auspices of his new party in the next Bangladesh election. In 2006 he won the Peace Prize for inventing microcredit.