Barack Obama, the man who achieved more in less time. Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision that honored the first-year U.S. president more for promise than achievement and drew both praise and disbelief around the world. The Nobel committee received 205 nominations for this year’s prize. Obama as a President has created a new climate in international politics. The Nobel committee recognized Obama’s efforts to solve complex global problems including working towards a world free of nuclear weapons. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
The Nobel Prize is an international award by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. The award was established by the 1895 will and estate of Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel. Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Each prize consists of a medal, personal diploma, and a cash award.
“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”
In winning the Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama joins an elite group of U.S. presidents. He is the fourth to win the prize, the third to win it while in office and the first to receive it during his first year in office. Prior to Obama, Jimmy Carter won Noble Prize in 2002, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.
President Barack Obama said that he was humbled by the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
and planned to travel to Oslo to accept the prize. Obama added that he does not see as recognition of his own accomplishments but rather as recognition of goals he has set for the United States and the world. “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize,” Obama said.
In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses”.
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel’s death.
The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel’s guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been tipped as a favorite for the prize, told Reuters that Obama was a deserving candidate and an “extraordinary example.”
The prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.4 million).
