Tunisia’s guardians of democracy pick up Nobel Prize

Tunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet, which on Thursday picked up its Nobel Peace Prize at a formal ceremony in Oslo, said the fight against terrorism was an “absolute priority”.

“Today we are in a great need of dialogue between civilisations and peaceful coexistence ... Today we need to make the fight against terrorism an absolute priority,” said Hussain Abbasi, the secretary general of the Tunisian General Labour Union, one of the four members of the Quartet. The award was presented to the group which consists 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 terrorist attacks.

“We live in turbulent times. 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 Al Nahda party and their opponents.

“Its work has led to a better platform for peace and non-violent resolution of conflicts. This is a story about building strong institutions to ensure justice and stability, and demonstrating the will to engage in dialogue and cooperation,” Kullmann Five said.

The Quartet is made up of the Human Rights League, General Labour Union (UGTT), the Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA), and the Order of Lawyers.

“Arms, in the end, only lead to destruction,” Abdul Satar Bin Mousa, head of Tunisia’s Human Rights League, told AFP in an interview just hours before the award ceremony.

“In Libya for example, there is now a certain dialogue... (The situations) in the neighbouring countries need to be resolved through dialogue with civil society, with political society, and of course putting aside the terrorist factions,” he said.

In honouring the Quartet, the Nobel Committee shone the spotlight on Tunisia as a rare success story to emerge from the Arab Spring, the movement of popular uprisings that started in the country.

While uprisings in neighbouring Libya, Yemen and Syria have led to war and chaos, and to the return of repression in Egypt, Tunisia successfully adopted a new constitution in January 2014 and held democratic elections at the end of last year.

But the democratisation process remains fragile. Authorities have declared a state of emergency for the second time this year after a suicide attack on a bus belonging to the president’s security entourage killed 12 people on November 24, for which the Daesh has claimed responsibility.

Bin Mousa said he was “very worried because each time there’s a terrorist act, some voices... say that if there’s terrorism, you have to put human rights aside.”

First medal made from ethical gold

The award is the first Nobel medal made from ethical gold.

A team of miners from the Colombian town of Íquira in the nation’s southwest province of Huila supplied the gold from a mine certified as ethical.

The medal was the result of the Norwegian Mint, which produces the medallion, joining forces with Colombia-based nonprofit the Alliance for Responsible Mining to highlight the problems faced by small-scale miners in poor parts of the world.

“We feel very proud to know the Nobel Prize has been made with material that comes from here, from our region, and it’s a very ethical and just material,” Jose Ignacio Perez, a miner at the Íquira Cooperative said.

The 150 grams of 18-carat gold in the 63-millimeter medal comes from the Iquira Cooperative which was awarded its Fairmined certification for meeting strict requirements on responsible practices, environmental protection and social development.

The production of gold has been linked to labor abuses, including forced and child labor, as well as forced displacement and environmental degradation, according to US-based labor rights group Verité.

Gold mining is a crucial source of income for many communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia and about 90 percent of the world’s gold miners work in artisanal and small-scale mines, often facing difficult conditions.

The awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize made from ethical gold could prove a watershed moment for the ethical gold cause, said Jeff Trexler, associate director of Fordham University’s Fashion Law Institute in New York City

source : gulfnews