Nobel Peace prizes for serving world leaders
OSLO: The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to serving heads of state or government several times since the honour was first handed out in 1901.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the prize on Friday for his “resolute” efforts to end five decades of war in his country.
Santos signed a historic peace accord on Sept 26 with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), but voters rejected it in a shock referendum result on Sunday. Here are the precedents:
2011: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - She was one of three women laureats along with Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen. The committee highlighted “their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”.
- 2009: Barack Obama - He was a surprise winner for his “extraordinary” diplomatic efforts on the international stage just nine months after he took office.
The Nobel committee attached “special importance to Obama’s vision and work for a world without nuclear weapons” and said he had created “a new climate in international politics”.
2000: Kim Dae Jung - He was a pro-democracy campaigner who became president of South Korea between 1998 and 2003. He won the prize in 2000, the year he helped organise a landmark reconciliation summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Kim Dae Jung died in 2006.
1994: Yitzhak Rabin - Rabin, Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat jointly won the prize for their efforts to reach a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, resulting in the Oslo Agreement in 1993. At the time Rabin was prime minister and Peres foreign minister of Israel, while Arafat was later elected president of the Palestinian National Authority. Their goal still eludes world leaders today however.
1993: F.W. de Klerk - As president of South Africa, de Klerk was instrumental in ending his country’s white-minority apartheid system and paving the way for majority rule.
His government released from prison the man who succeeded him, African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. The two won the prize jointly in 1993.
- 1990: Mikhail Gorbachev - He was awarded the peace prize in October 1990. The reforms in part inspired by Gorbachev led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the reunification of Germany the following year and the effective dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.