Congratulations to the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2015
The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize has been announced: Congratulations to National Dialogue Quartet.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2015 was awarded to 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".
What did the Norwegian Nobel committee say about them?
In the words of the citation, the Tunisian national dialogue quartet made a “decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine revolution”.
The quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 when the democratisation 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 award was not awarded to the separate organizations - but only to the Quartet.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 96 times to 129 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2015, 103 individuals and 26 organizations.
Since the International Committee of the Red Cross has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize three times (in 1917, 1944 and 1963), and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize two times (in 1954 and 1981), there are 23 individual organizations which have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Click on the links to get more information.
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.
VIA THE GUARDIAN: In the weeks and months to come, civil society organisations across the Arab world will be asking whether they can repeat the success of the Nobel peace prize-winning team in Tunisia. Some observers, including the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, hope their achievements can herald a fresh start for democratic transitions.
The Tunisian national dialogue quartet’s work is certainly inspiring. As we celebrate Tunisia’s moderated political settlement, other groups across the Middle East and North Africa will probably be motivated to find alternative ways of solving the region’s many crises. Civil society organisations will reach out to their colleagues in Tunisia for advice.
Who are the Nobel peace prize winners and what role did they play in building a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia:
The Tunisian national dialogue quartet is a coalition of civil society groups that came together in the summer of 2013 when Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab spring, was at a crossroads between democracy and violence. The Islamist party Ennahda and its allies, who had won elections after the Jasmine revolution and the fall of the dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, were filling the state machine with unqualified loyalists and trying to force through a constitution that made Islam the state religion and imposed new limits on free expression and assembly.
