Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet Becomes 129th to Win Nobel Peace Prize
Posted on the 09 October 2015 by Sampathkumar Sampath
"When
people decide to live, destiny shall obey, and one day ... the slavery chains
must be broken." ~ words of a Tunisian poet !
A revolution known
as Jasmine Revolution, an intensive campaign of civil resistance, including a
series of street demonstrations began on
18 December 2010 and led to the ousting of longtime president Zine El Abidine
Ben Ali in January 2011. It eventually led to a thorough democratization of the
country and to free and democratic elections. The demonstrations were
precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of
political freedoms and poor living conditions. The protests constituted the
most dramatic wave of social and political unrest; resulted in scores of deaths
and injuries, most of which were the result of action by police and security
forces against demonstrators.
All that occurred
in ‘ Tunisia ‘ – the northernmost country in Africa. Its northernmost point, Ras ben Sakka, is the
northernmost point on the African continent. It is bordered by Algeria, Libya and the Mediterranean Sea. Its name is derived
from its capital city, Tunis, which is located on the country's northeast
coast. More web searches will be made on the
country and the association as they have won the coveted Nobel Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five
Nobel Prizes created by the Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments
manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics,
Physiology or Medicine, and Literature. Since 1901, it has been awarded
annually (with some exceptions) to those who have "done the most or the
best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of
standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
The Norwegian Nobel
Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2015 is to be awarded to
the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for its decisive contribution to the
building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine
Revolution of 2011. The Quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 when the
democratization process was in danger of collapsing as a result of political
assassinations and widespread social unrest. It established an alternative,
peaceful political process at a time when the country was on the brink of civil
war. It was thus instrumental in enabling Tunisia, in the space of a few years,
to establish a constitutional system of government guaranteeing fundamental
rights for the entire population, irrespective of gender, political conviction
or religious belief.
The
National Dialogue Quartet has comprised four key organizations in Tunisian
civil society; they represent different sectors and values in Tunisian society:
working life and welfare, principles of the rule of law and human rights. On
this basis, the Quartet exercised its role as a mediator and driving force to
advance peaceful democratic development in Tunisia with great moral authority.
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2015 is awarded to this Quartet, not to the four
individual organizations as such.
Those
forming part of the quartet are : the President of the Tunisian employers
union, Wided Bouchamaoui, Secretary General of the Tunisian General Labour
Union, Houcine Abbassi , President of the Tunisian Human Rights League,
Abdessattar ben Moussa and the president of the National Bar Association,
Mohamed Fadhel Mahmoud. This quartet has been awarded Nobel
Peace Prize 2015. The selecting panel said group established a 'peaceful political
process when country was on the brink of civil war'. The prize is a huge victory for small
Tunisia, whose young and still shaky democracy suffered two extremist attacks
this year that killed 60 people and devastated the tourism industry.
Tunisia is the only
country in the region to painstakingly build a democracy, involving a range of
political and social forces in dialog to create a constitution, legislature
and democratic institutions. 'More than anything, the prize is intended as an
encouragement to the Tunisian people, who despite major challenges have laid
the groundwork for a national fraternity which the committee hopes will serve
as an example to be followed by other countries,' Nobel Peace Prize Committee
Chairwoman Kaci Kullmann Five said.
'It's a prize that
crowns more than two years of efforts deployed by the quartet when the country
was in danger on all fronts,' he said. The decision came as a surprise to many,
with speculation having focused on Europe's migrant crisis or the Iran-U.S.
nuclear deal in July. A favorite among those placing bets had been German
Chancellor Angela Merkel for pledging to keep her country's borders open to
hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from Syria and other countries. Others
mentioned in the buzz included the Reverend Mussi Zerai, an Eritrean priest who
helps co-ordinate rescue missions for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, and
Saudi blogger Raif Badawi. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian
counterpart Javad Zarif were also mooted as candidates for their July deal on
Iran's nuclear program, as was Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and rebel
leader Rodrigo Londono.
'More than anything, the prize is intended as
an encouragement to the Tunisian people, who despite major challenges have laid
the groundwork for a national fraternity which the Committee hopes will serve
as an example to be followed by other countries.' The laureates will receive their prizes at a
ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of prize
creator Alfred Nobel, a Swedish philanthropist and scientist.
While Tunisia has
been much less violent than neighbouring Libya or Syria, its transition to
democracy has been marred by occasional violence, notably from Islamic
extremists including this attack in March when gunmen killed 22 people, again
mostly tourists, at the country's leading museum, the Bardo in Tunis.
There were 273
candidates nominated for the 2015 peace prize, five fewer than in 2014. The
award capped a week of Nobel Prize announcements, with the winners of the
medicine, physics, chemistry and literature awards presented earlier in
Stockholm. The economics award –not an original Nobel Prize but created in 1968
– will be announced on Monday.
The
Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 95 times to 128 Nobel Laureates between 1901
and 2014, 103 individuals and 25 organizations. With the announcement Friday morning that the
Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet will be the latest recipient of the Nobel
Peace Prize, the number of Peace Prize laureates will tick up to 129. That
figure doesn’t match up with the number of years the prize has been given, as
some years have multiple honorees and others–historically times of war–have
none. But it also wouldn’t match up with the number of prizes announced. That’s
because in 1973 Le Duc Tho became the first and only person ever to voluntarily
refuse a Nobel Peace Prize. The prize had been awarded jointly to Tho, a North
Vietnamese politician and diplomat, and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
for their work negotiating a ceasefire in the Vietnam War.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
9th Oct
2015.