Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos wins Nobel Peace Prize
Q. The 2016 Nobel Peace Prize on 7th Oct was awarded to which country’s president?- Published on 10 Oct 16a. Colombia
b. Peru
c. Bolivia
d. None of the above
ANSWER: Colombia
The 2016 Nobel peace prize was awarded on 7th Oct 2016 to the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for resolute efforts to bring the nation’s 5 decade long civil war to an end.
- This war claimed the lives of 220,000 Colombian people and displaced nearly 6 million
- This civil war is the one of the longest in modern times and the sole remaining armed conflict in the Americas
- President Santos initiated the negotiations that culminated in the peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas as he sought to move the peace process forward.
- Accord was controversial though he was able to ensure Colombian voters were able to voice their opinion concerning the peace accord in a referendum
- Outcome of the vote was not what was expected as a narrow majority of 13 million Colombians voted against the accord
- Despite the No majority vote in the referendum, President Santos brought the conflict to an end
- His endeavours to attain peace fulfil the criteria of the prize
- Former Nobel peace prize winners range from Red Cross to Mother Teresa and Desmond Tutu.
- The first winner of the Nobel peace prize was Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross Movement
