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International Atomic Energy Agency
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Founded: 1957 in Vienna, Austria
Prize motivation: "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way"
Arms control and disarmament
Preventing the Military Use of Nuclear Energy
The IAEA was established in 1957 for the purpose of promoting increased use of nuclear power for civil purposes without entailing the further spread of nuclear arms. When the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force in 1970, the IAEA became the most important instrument for controlling that the treaty was complied with.
All non-nuclear weapon states that have acceded to the NPT must accept monitoring by the IAEA of their nuclear power stations and other nuclear facilities. This control, carried out both by technical means and in local inspections, has grown increasingly efficient. The IAEA was for instance the first to show that North Korea was developing nuclear weapons. In the lead-up to the war with Iraq in 2003, the IAEA disagreed with the American claims that the country had resumed its nuclear arms program. In this case, too, the IAEA proved to be right.
In the view of the Nobel Committee, the threat of proliferation of nuclear arms must be met by the broadest possible international cooperation under the leadership of the IAEA and the UN Security Council.
United Nations
United Nations (U.N.)
Founded: 1945 in New York, NY, USA
Prize motivation: "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world"
Field: world organizing
The United Nations (UN)
Support for organized cooperation between states and for the build-up of a global organization has been an important guideline for the Nobel Committee throughout its history. It therefore came as no surprise that the United Nations was favored on the occasion of the Peace Prize centenary in 2001, together with the organization's Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In previous years the Committee had agreed on a total of thirteen Laureates with connections with the United Nations.
The United Nations Organization was planned by the allies, with the United States in the lead, during World War II, and in 1945 it replaced the League of Nations as a forum for safeguarding world peace. Disagreements between the great powers made it impossible to establish a supranational armed force under UN auspices that could be put into action against violators of the peace. In its early years the organization's efforts were concentrated instead on overcoming poverty and the promotion of economic and social development. Since 1970 the advancement of human rights has been an increasingly important United Nations concern.
Médecins Sans Frontières
Médecins Sans Frontières
Founded: 1971 in Paris, France
Prize motivation: "in recognition of the organization's pioneering humanitarian work on several continents"
Role: An independent, neutral and impartial emergency aid organization
Field: humanitarian work
Médecins Sans Frontières
Médecins Sans Frontières is an independent, neutral and impartial emergency aid organization that was founded in France in 1971. It demands full and unimpeded freedom to carry out its work in accordance with medical ethics and the rights of human beings to humanitarian aid. The organization is a frequent critic of violence and violations of human rights in areas of conflict where it has stationed doctors and aid workers.
MSF has been involved in a large number of aid operations, both at scenes of natural disasters and in theatres of war. The organization's current budget amounts to NOK 2 billion. It annually sends out 2,500 doctors and nurses, who are well assisted by 15,000 local employees in 80 countries. MSF annually carries out 6 million consultations and 200,000 surgical interventions. Such figures make it one of the world's largest emergency aid organizations.
International Labour Organization
International Labour Organization (I.L.O.)
Founded: 1919 in Geneva, Switzerland
Field: human rights
"If You Want Peace, Secure Justice"
Fifty years after the Versailles peace conference resolved to establish it, the International Labor Organization (ILO) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee was thereby following up a tradition going back to 1951, when the Frenchman Léon Jouhaux received the Prize.
The main object of the ILO's activity is to establish principles whereby the working conditions and social rights of employees can be improved. It is basic to the organization's outlook that such reforms strengthen the cause of peace because they reduce social injustice. Up to 1969 the organization had adopted 128 conventions drawn up by representatives of national authorities, employers and employees from its member countries.
United Nations Children's Fund
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Founded: 1946 in New York, NY, USA
Role: An international aid organization established by the UN
Field: humanitarian work
The United Nations Children's Fund - UNICEF
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) was founded by the new world organization, the United Nations, in 1946. To begin with, UNICEF concentrated on supplying food, clothes and medicine to children and mothers in war-torn Europe, China and Palestine. From the early 1950s on, the organization set itself longer-term objectives aimed at developing countries. It launched measures aimed at mothers and infants, gave advice on nutrition, distributed vitamin-rich food, and fought disease. As part of these efforts, UNICEF built thousands of health stations in the third world and launched projects to ensure school attendance for children and adolescents. The organization's work was strengthened when the UN adopted a Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959.
According to the Nobel Committee, UNICEF's activities marked a breakthrough for the idea of solidarity between nations, which helped to reduce the difference between rich and poor states. That also reduced the danger of war.
mmittee of the Red Cross
Comité international de la Croix Rouge (International Committee of the Red Cross)
Founded: 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland
Field: humanitarian work
Peace Prize Winner for the Third Time
The International Committee of the Red Cross was declared the winner of the Peace Prize both in 1917 and in 1944. The main reason was its efforts during the two World Wars.
In 1963, it was 100 years since the Peace Prize Laureate in 1901, Henri Dunant, founded the Red Cross. On the occasion of the centenary, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wished to call attention to the importance of the organization in the global community. It also wished to reward the organization's work since World War II, but this time the Swiss Red Cross Committee shared the honor with the League of Red Cross Societies. Together, the two organizations made up what is now known as the International Red Cross.
The Nobel Committee paid tribute to the International Committee of the Red Cross in particular for its work on the revised Geneva Convention of 1949 and its work during the conflicts in Hungary, Algeria, the Congo and Tibet.
League of Red Cross Societies
Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge (League of Red Cross Societies)
Founded: 1919 in Paris, France
Field: humanitarian work
The International Cooperative Body for the National Societies
The League of Red Cross Societies was founded in 1919, the year after the end of World War I. The initiative came from Henry P. Davison, President of the American Red Cross. Experience from the war showed that the national Red Cross Societies ought to cooperate more closely also in peacetime. The Red Cross Societies of the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan were the first members of the League, known today as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The League's first task was to undertake aid work in countries where the populations had suffered most severely during the war. Since then, the organization has carried out extensive aid work in peacetime when flooding, droughts and other natural disasters have led to hunger, need and death.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Founded: 1951 in Geneva, Switzerland
Role: An international aid organization established by the UN
Humanitarian work
The First UN Organization to Be Awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace
The prize to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) followed in the tradition of rewarding humanitarian work in the spirit of Fridtjof Nansen. A second purpose was to show support for the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. At the same time, the Nobel Committee wanted to draw the world's attention to the fact that international aid work for refugees was in danger of a financial crisis, because UN member countries had not granted enough funding for the purpose. The 1954 Peace Prize was thus an appeal to all the world's governments to give more financial support to a vulnerable group.
In the first half of the 1950s, the highest numbers of refugees were to be found in Western Europe and the Middle East, and the UNHCR concentrated its aid on three kinds of measure: voluntary repatriation to one's country of origin, emigration, or permanent residence in the countries where the refugees were at the time.
Friends Service Council
Friends Service Council (The Quakers)
Founded: 1647 in London, United Kingdom
Field: peace movement
"Children of Light"
On the occasion of the tercentenary in 1947 of the foundation of the Christian community the Quakers, the Nobel Committee resolved to award the Peace Prize to the congregation's two aid organizations. One was The Friends Service Council, which had been established in 1927 to carry out the missionary and aid work of the British Quakers. Its activities were founded in ancient traditions. In accordance with the belief that God's goodness shows itself in good deeds, the Quakers had for a long time been engaged in providing aid to the poor and sick. They regarded social injustice and intolerance as important causes of war, and spearheaded the struggles against slavery, for social reforms, and for women's rights.
The Quakers opposed the use of arms and in the early 1800s took part in the foundation of the first peace societies. In both World Wars they took part in humanitarian aid projects for military and civilian war victims. The 1947 prizes marked the Nobel Committee's recognition both of pioneering work in the international peace movement and of humanitarian work carried out without regard for race or nationality.
Nansen International Office for Refugees
Office international Nansen pour les Réfugiés (Nansen International Office for Refugees)
Founded: 1921 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Role: An international aid organization established by Fridtjof Nansen
Field: humanitarian work
The Nansen International Office for Refugees
The Nansen Office was set up in 1930 in accordance with a League of Nations resolution to keep up the relief work that had been launched by Fridtjof Nansen, the first high commissioner for refugees. Early in the 1930s, the Office was busy in helping Armenians who had been driven out of Turkey, and it was an important driving force behind the drawing up of the League of Nations Refugee Convention.
Later in the 1930s, the organization cared mainly for refugees located in Central and South-eastern Europe, France, Syria and China. The Office ran refugee camps, issued passports to the stateless (Nansen passports), and helped to provide visas, jobs, medicine and food.
The Nansen Office was closed in 1938, but its activities have been carried on by a new Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees which has its seat in London.
Permanent International Peace Bureau
Bureau international permanent de la Paix (Permanent International Peace Bureau)
Founded: 1891 in Berne, Switzerland
Field: peace movement
The Heart and Brains of the Peace Societies
After 1870, a popular peace movement grew up and spread in Europe and the USA. In a number of countries men and women of the bourgeoisie took initiatives to establish peace societies. They would work for the cause of peace in their local communities. They campaigned for disarmament and for the use of mediation and arbitration in the solution of international disputes.
In due course a need was felt for an office that could coordinate and direct these activities. On the initiative of the Dane Fredrik Bajer (Peace Prize Laureate in 1908), the International Peace Bureau was opened in 1891, located in Berne, Switzerland. The Swiss Élie Ducommun (Peace Prize Laureate in 1902) was the Peace Bureau's first secretary-general. The Bureau published a journal and held annual peace congresses. In 2005 the IPB had over 170 member organizations. Its headquarters is in Geneva.
Institute of International Law
Institut de droit international (Institute of International Law)
Founded: 1873 in Ghent, Belgium
Role: Scientific society
Field: peace movement, world organizing
Institut de Droit International
"Justitia et pace" - Justice and peace - is the slogan of this nongovernmental organization of lawyers, founded in 1873. The Belgian lawyer Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns was the initiator, and the aim was to build an international institute which would be an authority on international law. The organization he created is still working to make the rules of international law, not war and violence, the guidelines for relations between sovereign states.
In 1904, the Institute of International Law won special praise for promoting international arbitration and for persuading states to accept the rules of law in wartime. The Institute was among other things given the credit for the provisions on arbitration which were adopted by the Hague Congress in 1899. In the inter-war years, the work of the Institute was very important to the League of Nations. Since 1945 the United Nations has found the reports and legal interpretations issued by the Institute of International Law very helpful.
Liu Xiaobo
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation Photo: Bi Yimin
Liu Xiaobo
Born: 28 December 1955, China
Residence at the time of the award:China
Prize motivation: "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China"
Field: human rights
Sentenced for the Crime of Speaking
Liu Xiaobo was born on the 28th of December 1955. As a young man he studied literature and philosophy, and worked as a literary critic and university lecturer in Beijing. He took a doctorate in 1988, after which he was a guest lecturer at universities in Europe and the USA.
Liu Xiaobo took part in the student protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989. For that he was sentenced to two years in prison. Later he served three years in a labour camp for having criticised China's one-party system.
For over twenty years, Liu has fought for a more open and democratic China. He demands that the Chinese authorities comply with Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution, which lays down that the country's citizens enjoy "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration".
In 2008, Liu was a co-author of Charta 08, a manifesto which advocates the gradual shifting of China's political and legal system in the direction of democracy. He was arrested in December 2008, and sentenced a year later to eleven years' imprisonment for undermining the state authorities. Liu has constantly denied the charges. "Opposition is not the same as undermining", he points out.
Barack H. Obama
Photo: Pete Souza, Obama-Biden Transition Project, licensed by Attribution Share Alike 3.0
Barack H. Obama
Born: 4 August 1961, Honolulu, HI, USA
Residence at the time of the award:USA
Prize motivation: "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"
Role: 44th President of the United States of America
Field: arms control and disarmament, world organizing
Inspires Hope for a Better Future
Barack H. Obama, the 44th President of the United States, had been in power for less than eight months when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. Among the reasons it gave, the Nobel Committee lauded Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Emphasis was also given to his support - in word and deed - for the vision of a world free from nuclear weapons.
Even before the election, Obama had advocated dialogue and cooperation across national, ethnic, religious and political dividing lines. As President, he called for a new start to relations between the Muslim world and the West based on common interests and mutual understanding and respect. In accordance with a promise he made during his election campaign, he set in motion a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. occupying forces from Iraq.
During his first year in power, President Obama showed himself to be a strong spokesman for human rights and democracy, and as a constructive supporter of the work being done to put effective measures in place to combat the climate crisis. This is in line with his appeal: "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges".
Martti Ahtisaari
Photo: Ken Opprann
Martti Ahtisaari
Born: 23 June 1937, Viipuri (now Vyborg), Finland (now Russia)
Residence at the time of the award:Finland
Prize motivation: "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts"
Field: negotiation
Settler of Conflicts and Peace Mediator
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2008 was awarded to Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland, for his great efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts. Ahtisaari was a major contributor when Namibia achieved independence in 1989-90, arbitrated in Kosovo in 1999 and 2005-07, and helped to bring the long-lasting conflict in the Aceh province in Indonesia to an end in 2005.
Ahtisaari was born in Viborg in 1937. In the Winter War in 1939-40, the town was annexed by the Soviet Union and its inhabitants were driven out. Those childhood experiences motivated him in his adult commitment to peace.
In 1977, following many years in the foreign service, Ahtisaari was appointed UN Commissioner for Namibia. The assignment aroused his interest in the resolution of conficts and peace mediation. He was President of Finland from 1994 to 2000. After his presidential term, he again stepped up his work for peace, among other things by establishing Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), which played an active part in bringing about the Aceh peace accord in 2005.
Muhammad Yunus
Photo: N.A. Mamun
Muhammad Yunus
Born: 28 June 1940, Chittagong, British India (now Bangladesh)
Residence at the time of the award:Bangladesh
Prize motivation: "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below"
Role: Founder of Grameen Bank
Field: humanitarian work
Banker to the Poorest of the Poor
Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 for their work to "create economic and social development from below". Grameen Bank's objective since its establishment in 1983 has been to grant poor people small loans on easy terms - so-called micro-credit - and Yunus was the bank's founder.
In 1972, following studies in Bangladesh and the USA, Yunus was appointed professor of economics at the University of Chittagong. When Bangladesh suffered a famine in 1974, he felt that he had to do something more for the poor beyond simply teaching. He decided to give long-term loans to people who wanted to start their own small enterprises. This initiative was extended on a larger scale through Grameen Bank.
According to Yunus, poverty means being deprived of all human value. He regards micro-credit both as a human right and as an effective means of emerging from poverty: Lend the poor money in amounts which suit them, teach them a few basic financial principles, and they generally manage on their own, Yunus claims.
Mohamed ElBaradei
Photo: M. Pelletier
Mohamed ElBaradei
Born: 17 June 1942, Cairo, Egypt
Residence at the time of the award:Egypt
Prize motivation: "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way"
Role: Director General of IAEA
Arms control and disarmament
Proliferation of Nuclear Arms Must Be Stopped
Mohamed ElBaradei took up the post of Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in December 1997, and had managed the Agency's affairs outstandingly for two four-year periods when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005. Just before the award was announced, ElBaradei was re-elected for a third period.
In the reasons it gave for the award, the Nobel Committee pointed to the important work ElBaradei and the IAEA had done to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that civil use of nuclear power takes place under reliable international control. The Committee also noted how much ElBaradei had done to strengthen the IAEA as an organization and to increase accession to the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Mohamed ElBaradei was born in Cairo in 1942. He read law in Egypt, and took a doctorate in international law at the New York University School of Law in 1974. Before becoming head of the IAEA he had worked for a number of years as an Egyptian diplomat and in the United Nations.
Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Born: 24 August 1929, Cairo, Egypt
Died: 11 November 2004
Residence at the time of the award:Palestine
Prize motivation: "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East"
Role: President of the Palestinian National Authority, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO
Field: negotiation
A Pistol and an Olive Branch
In 1974, Yasser Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly. He said he was holding an olive branch for peace in one hand and a freedom fighter's pistol in the other. Twenty years later he and the Israeli leaders Peres and Rabin received the Peace Prize for having opted for the olive branch by signing the so-called Oslo Accords in Washington. The agreement was aimed at reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Arafat grew up in Cairo and Jerusalem. He took part in the war against the new state of Israel in 1948, when many Palestinians were expelled. As a qualified engineer, he took a job in Kuwait. From there, he organized the guerrilla group Fatah, which attacked Israel. Following Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Arafat became the leader of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), an umbrella organization for Palestinian guerrilla groups. The groups resorted to terror to attract world attention, but it gradually became clear to Arafat that he would have to accept the state of Israel for the USA to be willing to mediate in the dispute. He approved the meeting of Palestinian negotiators with Israelis at secret negotiations in Oslo.
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Born: 18 July 1918, Qunu, South Africa
Residence at the time of the award:South Africa
Prize motivation: "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa"
Field: human rights, negotiation
Africa's Greatest Freedom Symbol
Son of a chief, Nelson Mandela studied law and became one of South Africa's first black lawyers. Early in the 1950s he was elected leader of the youth wing of the ANC (African National Congress) liberation movement. When the country's white minority government prohibited the ANC in 1960, Mandela became convinced that armed struggle was inevitable. Inspired by the guerrilla wars in Algeria and Cuba, he organized a military underground movement that engaged in sabotage. In 1962 he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for high treason and conspiracy against the state.
From 1964 to 1982 he was confined to the notorious prison island Robben Island, together with several other resistance leaders. He was then moved to prison on the mainland until his release in 1990. During his imprisonment, Mandela became a rallying point for South Africa's oppressed, and the world's most famous political prisoner.
Nelson Mandela shared the Peace Prize with the man who had released him, President Frederik Willem de Klerk, because they had agreed on a peaceful transition to majority rule.
Wangari Maathai
Wangari Muta Maathai
Born: 1 April 1940, Nyeri, Kenya
Died: 25 September 2011, Nairobi, Kenya
Residence at the time of the award:Kenya
Prize motivation: "for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace"
Field: humanitarian work
Sustainable Development, Democracy and Peace
Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She was also the first female scholar from East and Central Africa to take a doctorate (in biology), and the first female professor ever in her home country of Kenya. Maathai played an active part in the struggle for democracy in Kenya, and belonged to the opposition to Daniel arap Moi's regime.
In 1977 she started a grass-roots movement aimed at countering the deforestation that was threatening the means of subsistence of the agricultural population. The campaign encouraged women to plant trees in their local environments and to think ecologically. The so-called Green Belt Movement spread to other African countries, and contributed to the planting of over thirty million trees.
Maathai's mobilisation of African women was not limited in its vision to work for sustainable development; she saw tree-planting in a broader perspective which included democracy, women's rights, and international solidarity. In the words of the Nobel Committee: "She thinks globally and acts locally."
Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi
Born: 21 June 1947, Hamadan, Iran
Residence at the time of the award:Iran
Prize motivation: "for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children"
Field: human rights
The First Female Peace Prize Laureate from the Islamic World
The lawyer Shirin Ebadi was Iran's first female judge. After Khomeini's revolution in 1979 she was dismissed. Ebadi opened a legal practice and began defending people who were being persecuted by the authorities. In the year 2000 she was imprisoned herself for having criticized her country's hierocracy.
Shirin Ebadi took up the struggle for fundamental human rights and especially the rights of women and children. She took part in the establishment of organizations that placed these issues on the agenda, and wrote books proposing amendments to Iran's succession and divorce laws. She also wanted to withdraw political power from the clergy and advocated the separation of religion and state.
In its choice of Ebadi, the Nobel Committee expressed a wish to reduce the tensions between the Islamic and the Western worlds following the terrorist attack on the United States on 11 September 2001. At the same time, the Committee wished to extend a helping hand to the Iranian reform movement.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum
Rigoberta Menchú Tum
Born: 9 January 1959, Aldea Chimel, Guatemala
Residence at the time of the award:Guatemala
Prize motivation: "in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples"
Human rights
Rigoberta Menchú Tum
In 1992 the western world celebrated that it was 500 years since Columbus reached America. In the same year, the Guatemalan Indian woman Rigoberta Menchú was awarded the Peace Prize for her work for the rights of indigenous peoples and reconciliation between ethnic groups. She had been nominated by Indian organizations, who wanted to draw attention to the fact that the European discovery of America had entailed the extermination and suppression of indigenous populations.
Rigoberta grew up in a country marked by extreme violence. Several members of her own family were killed by the army, which was hunting down opponents of the regime. She herself fled to Mexico in the early 1980s, where she came into contact with European groups that were working for human rights in Latin America. With time, Rigoberta began to favor a policy of reconciliation with the authorities, and Norway served as the intermediary in negotiations between the government and the guerrilla organizations. A peace agreement was signed in 1996. Rigoberta Menchú herself became a UN Ambassador for the world's indigenous peoples.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi
Born: 19 June 1945, Rangoon (now Yangon), Burma (now Myanmar)
Residence at the time of the award:Burma
Prize motivation: "for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights"
Human rights
Burma's Modern Symbol of Freedom
The Burmese Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of the legendary liberation movement leader Aung San. Following studies abroad, she returned home in 1988. From then on, she led the opposition to the military junta that had ruled Burma since 1962. She was one of the founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and was elected secretary general of the party. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all use of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government. The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country's ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony.
In the election in 1990, the NLD won a clear victory, but the generals prevented the legislative assembly from convening. Instead they continued to arrest members of the opposition and refused to release Suu Kyi from house arrest.
The Peace Prize had a significant impact in mobilizing world opinion in favor of Aung San Suu Kyi's cause, but she remains under strict surveillance in Rangoon and the old regime is still in power.
Alva Myrdal
Alva Myrdal
Born: 31 January 1902, Uppsala, Sweden
Died: 1 February 1986, Stockholm, Sweden
Residence at the time of the award:Sweden
Role: Writer, Diplomat, former Cabinet Minister
Field: arms control and disarmament
Disarmament and Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones
Alva Myrdal already had an extensive career behind her when she was elected to the Swedish "riksdag" (legislative assembly) in 1962. She had studied philology and pedagogy, and in the inter-war years devoted herself to improving the conditions of the working class through the Social Democrat Party. She also made a name for herself as a campaigner for women's rights.
After World War II, Alva Myrdal held prominent posts in the United Nations system, hand-picked by the Secretary-General. She was among other things head of UNESCO's social science section. From 1955 she was Swedish Ambassador to India.
It was, however, as the government minister in charge of disarmament issues that Alva Myrdal really stood out as an innovator. As the representative of a non-aligned Sweden, she worked actively to persuade the superpowers to disarm. The nuclear race was a major concern, and she fought for nuclear weapons-free zones in Europe. Each individual country ought to take the initiative and ban nuclear arms on its territory.
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa
Born: 26 August 1910, Uskup (now Skopje), Ottoman Empire (now Republic of Macedonia)
Died: 5 September 1997, Calcutta, India
Residence at the time of the award:India
Role: Leader of Missionaries of Charity, Calcutta
Field: humanitarian work
Saint in the Gutter - and Saint in Heaven?
At the age of twelve, the Catholic Albanian girl Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu heard a call. God demanded that she devote her life to Him. She entered a nunnery, received an education, and was sent to Calcutta in India to be a teacher. Her new name was Teresa. In India she received a second call from God: to help the poor while living among them. She founded a new sisterhood, Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa and her helpers built homes for orphans, nursing homes for lepers and hospices for the terminally ill in Calcutta. Mother Teresa's organization also engaged in aid work in other parts of the world.
The modest nun became known all over the world, and money poured in. But she was also criticized. It was alleged that dying people in the hospices were refused pain relief, whereas Mother Teresa herself accepted hospital treatment. She also held a conservative view on abortion. She was regarded as a spokesperson for the Vatican. In 2003, the Pope took the first step towards her canonization.
( تقرير عن مشاركة سيئة )، و الموجودة أسفل كل مشاركة .
2013-10-11, 09:09
العرض العادي
