Female Nobel Peace prize winners
1905 -
Bertha von Suttner1931 -
Jane Addams1946 -
Emily Greene Balch1976 -
Betty Williams1976 -
Mairead Corrigan1979 -
Mother Teresa1982 -
Alva Myrdal1991 -
Aung San Suu Kyi1992 -
Rigoberta Menchú Tum1997 -
Jody Williams2003 -
Shirin Ebadi2004 -
Wangari Maathai
1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is currently under house arrest in Myanmar, and has been for 14 of the last 20 years. The military junta in control of Myanmar is threatened by her support following her party’s landslide victory in a 1990 general election. Had the government not nullified the results, Aung San Suu Kyi would have been the country’s Prime Minister. (More in my previous posts.)
Please sign the petition denouncing the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Because I've been seeing a lot about the Nobel Peace Prize...
It’s just an award. How about we debate the issues as passionately and thoroughly as we do trophies?
Let’s focus on peace now, since that’s what it’s all about anyway.
In a surprise, Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize
From AP, in its entirety:
OSLO – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.
“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.”
The committee said it attached special importance to Obama’s vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.
“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play,” the committee said.
Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the U.N. panel on climate change.
The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year’s prize.
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.
Nobel Laureate Announces Growth of Micro-Loan Program
By Aru Pande
Washington
12 August 2009Global recognition including the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom has not kept Muhammad Yunus from his main goal - getting people out of poverty with the help of small loan-interest loans. The Nobel Laureate announced that his banking organization, Grameen America, has issued micro-loans to 1000 low-income borrowers in the United States.
Muhammad Yunus says he is on a mission to make the financial system accessible to every human being on the planet, whether they reside in a village in his native Bangladesh, or in the financial capital of the world - New York City.President Barack Obama (l) places a 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom around the neck of Muhammad Yunus at the White House, 12 Aug 2009Hours before receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House Wednesday, Yunus told reporters in Washington that credit should be a human right available to anyone who needs it.
“Now we can build a new kind of financial system, a financial system which can work just like we do in Jackson Heights, giving people who are never able to open even a bank account, forget about taking a loan,” said Muhammad Yunus.
Yunus began giving small personal loans to women in Bangladesh in the 1970’s. The villagers eventually paid him back with interest, and this money was put back into the system, to provide loans to more low-income women.
Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 2006, and his micro-lending program has launched into a worldwide movement.
Since January of last year, Yunus’ Grameen America has lent over $2 million to U.S. women at or below the poverty line, allowing them to start or expand a small business. The loans are low-interest and collateral free, and so far, Yunus says they have been paid back at a rate of nearly 100-percent, despite a recession.
The Nobel Laureate says his locally-based micro-credit programs are unaffected by the global economic crisis.
“It’s tied to real economy, not paper based economy where you create a fantasy world of finance, and that’s what created the crisis, so we don’t belong to the fantasy world,” he said.
Yunus says micro-credit programs are especially vital at a time when unemployment rates are rising. He encourages governments to give people options that include the ability to become self-sufficient with the help of small, low-interest loans.
“They will build their own employment and in the process they will inspire other people that look I can handle myself, because I am an experienced person, I am a skilled person, why should I be sitting around and taking government money and live my life,” said Yunus.
Yunus is taking this message and his micro-lending services to other parts of the U.S., as well as China, hoping to help lift more people out of poverty.
