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Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize for 2009
United States President Barack Obama has been given the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 for his extraordinary efforts
on October 9, 2009 in strengthening international diplomacy and for taking landmark initiatives to
create a nuclear-free world.
Announcing the award here, an official of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said
that Obama was yet to be informed about the award, and would receive the award
on December 10 this year. He also said that Obama had beaten 205 other nominees for the prestigious award,
which includes a gold medal, a Nobel diploma and 1.4 million dollars.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 90 times to 120 Nobel Laureates
between 1901 and 2009 97 times to individuals and 23 times to organizations.
Since International Committee of the Red Cross was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1917, 1944 and 1963, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 and 1981, that means 97
individuals and 20 organizations have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish
industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. According to Nobel's will, the Peace
Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best
work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing
armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." |
Barack Obama
Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize for 2009
He declared: "I will not be a perfect President. But I can promise you this - I will always tell you what I
think and where I stand." |
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Barack
Obama USA’s 44th president
In the USA election 2008 Barack Obama, the son of a father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, was
elected the USA’s 44th president on Tuesday, the 5th November,
2008 breaking the ultimate racial barrier to become the first African American to claim the country’s highest
office.
A "Together, we will change this country and change the
world." This was Barack Obama's rallying cry to Americans in the closing days of
a campaign which saw him become the first black President of the United States.
A politician from whom the world expects great things, Mr Obama described the
2008 election as a "defining moment" for Americans who were looking for "real
and lasting change that makes a difference in their lives".
Obama will be one of the youngest presidents in American history, the first born outside the
continental United States (in Hawaii) and only the third to move
directly from the U.S. Senate to the White House. He burst on the national political scene just over four years ago, with an
electrifying keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Months after that address, Obama won his U.S. Senate seat, and there was
immediate talk of a run for president.
For most voters, the sagging economy was the topmost concern – a dynamic that
played strongly to the Democrat’s favor. Six in 10 voters said the economy was
the most important issue facing the nation, according to exit polls – far more
than cited energy, Iraq, terrorism or healthcare.
He said America could not afford to ignore the race issue and added that
incendiary comments by his former pastor the Rev Jeremiah Wright reflected the
"complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a
part of our union that we have yet to perfect". |
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Barack Obama: A brief bio
Age: 47
Birthdate: Aug. 4, 1961
Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii
Education: Columbia University; Harvard Law School
Wife: Michelle Robinson
Children: Two daughters
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in August 1961, Barack Hussein Obama Jr was named
after his Kenyan father, whose first name means "blessed" in Swahili.
His father grew up in Kenya herding goats but gained a scholarship to study in
Hawaii where he met Mr Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, of Kansas.
While still a toddler, his father went to study at Harvard but there was no
money for the family to go with him and he later returned to Kenya alone before
his parents divorced. Mr Obama's mother married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro and the young child spent four
of his pre-teen years in Jakarta.
He moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attend school,
before studying political science at Columbia University in New York.
He moved to Chicago where he spent three years as a community organiser, before
attending Harvard Law School in 1988, where he became the first African-American
president of the Harvard Law Review.
Mr Obama later returned to Chicago to practise civil rights law, representing
victims of housing and employment discrimination. He married lawyer Michelle in 1992 and they have two young daughters, Malia Ann,
10, and Sasha, seven. And it has been a meteoric rise for the man who first attracted international
attention just four years ago when he made a keynote speech at the 2004
Democratic National Convention, calling for more financial support for families
of US troops killed in action and urging unity. He became the only current African American US senator the following year - and only its fifth in history.
Labelling his own campaign for change in all aspects of life - from foreign
policy to healthcare, education and the legislative process - as an "improbable
quest", Mr Obama still insists "few obstacles can withstand the power of
millions of voices calling for change". Defining his presidency, Mr Obama said it was time to "reclaim our
American dream" and told voters: "At this defining moment in history, you, each and
everyone of you, can give this country the change that we need."
The Nobel Peace Prize
Alfred Nobel's will stated that a committee of five people elected by the
Norwegian Parliament should award the prize. Norway and Sweden were at that time
still in union, and with Sweden responsible for all foreign policy. Nobel felt
that the prize might be less subject to political corruption if awarded by
Norway. The Peace Prize is presented annually in Oslo, in the presence of the
king, on December 10 (the anniversary of Nobel's death), and is the only Nobel
Prize not presented in Stockholm. " |
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