The human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman has saluted Sana'a University students as inciters of Yemen’s Peaceful Youth Popular Revolution starting on 15 January 2011. 

In a statement published on her official Facebook page, Karman wrote to say, “Today marks the day when the wheel of change in Yemen started rolling. It would not stop until the dream represented by a state of equal citizenship, justice, welfare, and law is fully accomplished.”  

Karman also paid tribute to the students of Sana'a University and to their comrades she described as “the vanguards who caused the great peaceful revolution to break out."

On January 2011, hundreds of students of Sana’a University came out in protests and rallies demanding to overthrow the then President Ali Saleh's regime. They chanted slogans against the government, calling for the fall of the regime. 

Protest demonstrations continued for more than a month while protesters were subjected to arrests and attacks by the security services of Saleh’s regime.