“The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet offers hope that serious political challenges can be overcome through dialogue and consensual politics”, Ban said in a statement.
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But this is also about the Nobel Committee trying to draw the world’s attention to what the quartet represents, to hold it up as a model for the rest of the globe to follow.
Since the Tunisia uprising, the Arab world has been rocked by massive upheaval that has toppled leaders in Egypt, Libya and Yemen and plunged Syria into a brutal civil war.
– Ahmed Samih, general director of Cairo-based Andalus Institute for Tolerance and anti-Violence Studies, said the award is “a recognition from the world that NGOs and labour syndicates in Tunisia rescued the country from a political fighting between the civil and Islamic forces”.
Mass demonstrations against the rule of long-standing Tunisian autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali at the end of 2010 quickly spread across North Africa and the Middle East, touching off the 2011 Arab Spring.
Houcine Abassi, head of Tunisia’s General Labour Union – one of the groups in the quartet – said the award was a “tribute to martyrs of a democratic Tunisia”. It wasn’t immediately clear who would accept the award at the December. 10 award ceremony.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday that the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. After the first of those killings – of outspoken lawyer Chokri Belaid – the country’s prime minister resigned, adding even more uncertainty to the political scene. Working together, they got the Islamists to agree to resign in favor of a caretaker government that would organize new elections, while the angry opposition returned to the table to complete the constitution.
“Tunisia has no other solution than dialogue despite ideological disagreements”, he said.
“This effort by our youth has allowed the country to turn the page on dictatorship”, he said.
Of course, Tunisia’s success to date is not only the result of the Quartet’s work – the country had better odds than any of its neighbors.
The Peace Prize decision Friday came as a surprise to many, with speculation having focused on Europe’s migrant crisis or the Iran-U.S. nuclear deal in July.
“I think that the Nobel Prize committee took a close look and did the right thing: it rewarded a good struggle and encouraged further wise activity”, he said. “But it was a bit bewildering”.
The third, the Tunisian Order of Lawyers (Ordre National des Avocats de Tunisie), continued to work despite facing repression and attempts to silence it.
The prize comes the day after unidentified assailants shot repeatedly at a lawmaker and a prominent sports magnate in the Tunisian city of Sousse, which depends heavily on tourism. Tunisia’s transition to democracy has been battered by a weak economy, terrorist attacks and bickering politicians, but it was able to avert the violent civil breakdown that many had feared.
Another in March killed 22 people, again mostly tourists, at the country’s leading museum, the Bardo in Tunis.
This would be fitting, because it was a Tunisian man, the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, who inadvertently launched the pro-democracy revolutions half a decade ago when he set himself on fire in despair over abuses from government officials.
The civil society leaders were cited for helping to create the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring.
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United Nations envoy Bernardino Leon has proposed a national unity government for Libya after months of hard talks between the north African country’s two rival governments.
