Tunisia Quartet awarded 2015 Nobel Peace Prize

The winners of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize — Tunisian National Dialouge Quartet members Tunisian General Labour Union secretary-general Houcine Abassi (from left), president of the Tunisian Order of Lawyers Mohamed Fadhel Mahfoudh, president of the Tunisian Human Rights League Abdessattar Ben Moussa and president of the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts Wided Bouchamaoui — stand on the stage during the presentation ceremony at City Hall in Oslo, Norway, on Thursday. — AFP

The Nobel Peace Prize was on Thursday presented to a group of four organisations that saved Tunisia’s transition to democracy through dialogue, a method the laureates are keen to see applied in Syria and Libya.

“This year’s prize is truly a prize for peace, awarded against a backdrop of unrest and war,” the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Kaci Kullmann Five said at the formal award ceremony in Oslo, held in the presence of Norway’s King Harald and under tight security amid the threat of a jihadist attack.

“We live in turbulent tim-es. In North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, millions of people are fleeing from war, oppression, suffering and terror,” she said.

“If every country had done as Tunisia has done, and paved the way for dialogue, tolerance, democracy and equal rights, far fewer people would have been forced to flee,” she said.

The National Dialogue Quartet, made up of four civil society groups, helped save Tunisia’s transition to democracy at a sensitive moment in 2013 when the process was in danger of collapsing because of widespread social unrest.

The group orchestrated a lengthy and thorny “national dialogue” between the Islamists of the Ennahda party and their opponents.

As the winners proudly received their gold medal, a group of Colombian miners also took pride in the event with the presentation of first Nobel medal made from ethical gold. A team of miners from the Colombi-an town of à quira have supplied the gold for the prestigious award from a mine certified as ethical.

As the winners proudly received their gold medal at the ceremony, a group of Colombian miners also took pride in the event with the presentation of first Nobel medal made from ethical gold. A team of miners from the Colombian town of à quira have supplied the gold for the prestigious award from a mine certified as ethical.