I'm overwhelmed: Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee

Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee said on Friday she was "overwhelmed" by the honour and never expected to be rewarded for efforts to end a war in her homeland, Liberia, and improve the lives of women in Africa.

"I'm numb, I'm fuzzy, I'm overwhelmed," Gbowee told Reuters in an interview in New York, where she is promoting her memoir Mighty Be Our Powers.

"And all I keep hearing in my head is the song of praise to God."

She said she had just arrived in New York on an overnight flight from San Francisco when she turned on her phone and learned she had won. She had not said a word the entire flight to the passenger sitting next to her, but she turned to him and said: "I just won a Nobel."

Gbowee, 39, who promoted a "sex strike" among efforts to end Liberia's civil war, shared the prize, announced on Friday, with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first woman freely elected as a head of state in Africa, and Yemen's Tawakul Karman, who called her honour "a victory for the Arab Spring."

"With or without a Nobel I will still do what I do because I am a symbol of hope in my community on the continent, in a place where there is little to be hopeful for," Gbowee said.

"If you are a symbol of hope you don't do it because you are expecting a reward, you do it because you are expected to do so."

Gbowee's Women For Peace movement is credited by some for helping end the war in 2003. Starting with prayers and songs at a fish market, she also urged the wives and girlfriends of leaders of the warring factions to deny them sex until they laid down their arms.