2009 News & Events
President Obama Wins The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009
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.
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. Dialogue and negotiations are
preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult
international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms
has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations.
Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more
constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is
confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
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. 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.
For 108 years, the
Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that
international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the
world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that
"Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for
a global response to global challenges."