The Nobel Peace Prize has traditionally put the spotlight on the work of stateswomen and men Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Barack Obama, civil rights activists Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi and organizations and institutes from the European Union to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “The lesson learned from Tunisia’s slow but sure transition to democracy was this: It was achieved by local actors and not by foreign diplomatic and military interventions”.
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The Tunisian League of Human Rights (LTDH) was the first Tunisian organisation to join FIDH in 1977.
“It is a source of pride for Tunisia, which has proven that dialogue saves a country from crisis, not weapons”, he said. For making that possible, Tunisia’s quartet richly deserve their recognition.
In an interview with AFP after the announcement, the Nobel committee chief said the quartet’s work proved that political compromise between secular and Islamist groups could result in meaningful democracy.
Tunisia’s President Beji Caid Essebsi, said the award recognised the country’s decision to choose the “path of consensus”.
“Tunisia has no other solution than dialogue despite ideological disagreements”, the 88-year-old said in a video posted on the presidency’s Facebook page. “We did it together, the four of us”.
William Lawrence, the director of Middle East and North Africa for the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, said the prize shows the world that the democratic process is alive in Tunisia despite the twin threats of economic crisis and terrorist attacks.
“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 told the AP. We all know how the Arab spring started and what the aim of it was.
The prize “is an honour… for all of Tunisia”, he said, expressing hope it would have an effect “for the image of Tunisia in the world” after deadly extremist attacks against tourists this year that have devastated the important tourism industry.
On the street, the prize was both welcomed and derided.
Watch shop manageress Safia Shabani agreed.
Meanwhile, Belarusian investigative journalist and prose writer Svetlana Alexievich has been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature.
The prize will be handed out at a ceremony in Oslo on December 10. “We have suffered a lot these past few years”.
Friday’s award serves as a reminder of the idealism that defined the Arab Spring’s early protests in 2011, when normal citizens across the Middle East and North Africa demanded a larger role in the governance of their autocratic countries.
Kaci Kullmann Five, the new head of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize… A Tunisian democracy group won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday October 9, 2015 for its contributions to the first and most successful Arab Spring movement.
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The killings of two opposition lawmakers Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi in 2013 shocked the nation. The Jasmine Revolution is how the popular uprising that broke out in the country has come to be known. In the new unity government, Ennahda has a cabinet minister. “Denying them democracy, denying them fundamental rights creates refugees instead of inhabitants who want to support their own country and foster positive development”.
