Nobel Peace Prize for Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet

BBC | October 9, 2015

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Tunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet for helping the country’s transition to democracy.

The Nobel committee said the group of civil society organisations had made a “decisive contribution” to democracy after the 2011 revolution.

It said the quartet helped establish a political process when the country “was on the brink of civil war”.

Tunisia’s uprising was the first and most successful of the Arab Spring.

Tunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet

The surprise winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has played a key role in mediating between the different parties in the country’s post-Arab Spring government.

The Quartet is credited with creating a national dialogue between the country’s Islamist and secular coalition parties amid deepening political and economic crisis in 2013.

President of the Tunisian employers union Wided Bouchamaoui, Secretary General of the Tunisian General Labour Union, Houcine Abassi, President of the Tunisian Human Rights League Abdessattar ben Moussa and the president of the National Bar Association, Mohamed Fadhel Mahmoud (L-R), arrive for a news conference in Tunis, on 21 September 2013. File photo/AFP/Getty Images/Fethi Belaid
President of the Tunisian employers union Wided Bouchamaoui, Secretary General of the Tunisian General Labour Union, Houcine Abassi, President of the Tunisian Human Rights League Abdessattar ben Moussa and the president of the National Bar Association, Mohamed Fadhel Mahmoud (L-R), arrive for a news conference in Tunis, on 21 September 2013. File photo/AFP/Getty Images/Fethi Belaid

Tunisia’s revolution – also known as the Jasmine Revolution – began in late 2010 and led to the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, followed by the country’s first free democratic elections.

Kaci Kullman Five, the chair of the Nobel peace committee, said the Quartet’s role in Tunisia’s democratisation was “directly comparable to the peace conferences mentioned by Alfred Nobel in his will”.

Houcine Abassi, head of Tunisia’s General Labour Union – one of the groups in the quartet – said the award was a “tribute to martyrs of a democratic Tunisia”.

“This effort by our youth has allowed the country to turn the page on dictatorship,” he said.

Abdessattar Ben Moussa of the Human Rights League – another of the quartet – said the award “fills us with joy” at a time when Tunisia “is going through a period marked by political tensions and terrorist threats”.

He told the Associated Press he hoped it would encourage the winners to take a “larger responsibility” in solving Tunisia’s problems.

Tunisia’s President Beji Caid Essebsi, said the award recognised the country’s decision to choose the “path of consensus”.

“Tunisia has no other solution than dialogue despite ideological disagreements,” he said in a video posted to his Facebook page.

The quartet is made up of four organisations: the Tunisian General Labour Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League, and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers.

It was created in 2013, two years after the revolution, when security in the country was threatened following the assassination of two key politicians and deadly clashes between Islamists and secular parts of society.

 

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