President Obama Wins Nobel Prize for Efforts in Peacebuilding

By Juontel White

President Barack Obama receives international recognition for working towards a nuclear arms-free world

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to President Barack Obama and the global community is filled with mix responses. Share your thoughts below.

Global Leaders Response:

“In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself” –Mohamed ElBaradei, head of IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

“It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama’s message of hope”–Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa,  former winner.

“I am concerned at the drift of the prize that is invariably going to politicians who have been, or who are still, involved in warfare. Obama has not left Iraq, he has stepped it up in Afghanistan. It is somewhat paradoxical to give it to a president who presides over the largest military arsenal in world history.” –Jan Oberg, Executive Director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research

“America’s return to the hearts of the people of the world”– French President Nicolas Sarkozy

“We congratulate Obama for winning the Nobel. His hard work and his new vision on global relations, his will and efforts for creating friendly and good relations at global level and global peace make him the appropriate recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.” –Siamak Hirai Spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Quotes courtesy of BBC NEWS

Nobel Peace Prize 2009 (Nobel Prize Press Release)

Oslo–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.”