BBC || The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who made peace last year with bitter foe Eritrea.
He was awarded the prize for his efforts to “achieve peace and international cooperation”.
Mr Abiy’s peace deal with Eritrea ended a 20-year military stalemate following their 1998-2000 border war.
He was named as the winner of the 100th Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, where he will receive the award in December.
It is worth some nine million Swedish crowns (about £730,000; $900,000).
Following the announcement, Mr Abiy said he was “humbled and thrilled”.
“Thank you very much. It is a prize given to Africa, given to Ethiopia and I can imagine how the rest of Africa’s leaders will take it positively to work on [the] peace-building process on our continent,” he added in a phone call with the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
A total of 301 candidates had been nominated for the prestigious award, including 223 individuals and 78 organizations.
There had been great speculation over who would win the prize, with climate activist Greta Thunberg widely tipped as the favourite. Under the Nobel Foundation’s rules, nomination shortlists are not allowed to be published for 50 years, and the organisation says any speculation ahead of the announcement is “sheer guesswork”.
What has Abiy Ahmed done?
After becoming prime minister in April 2018, Mr Abiy introduced massive liberalising reforms to Ethiopia, shaking up what was a tightly controlled nation.
He freed thousands of opposition activists from jail and allowed exiled dissidents to return home. Under him, several women have also been appointed to prominent positions.
Most importantly, he signed the peace deal with Eritrea.
But his reforms also lifted the lid on Ethiopia’s ethnic tensions, and the resulting violence forced some 2.5 million people from their homes.
Why did he win?
Mr Abiy, 43, was honoured for his “decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea”, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.
“The prize is also meant to recognise all the stakeholders working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and in the East and Northeast African regions,” they said.
“Peace does not arise from the actions of one party alone. When Prime Minister Abiy reached out his hand, President Afwerki grasped it, and helped to formalise the peace process between the two countries. The Norwegian Nobel Committee hopes the peace agreement will help to bring about positive change for the entire populations of Ethiopia and Eritrea.”
Since the Eritrea deal, Mr Abiy – the youngest head of government in Africa – has also been involved in peace processes in other African countries, the committee said. This has included helping to broker an agreement between Sudan’s military leaders and civilian opposition after months of protests.
Mr Abiy’s office said the award was testimony “to the ideals of unity, cooperation and mutual coexistence that the prime minister has been consistently championing”.
But as usual I was up and at em this morning and found out that PM Abiy has won the Nobel Prize.
This young visionary PM Abiy deserves every ounce of it. The other leader from the old country who deserved the same award was, like I said before, the late Emperor Selassie. I had explained that already!!
O Ethiopia!!! O you that gem of the colored!!! O Ethiopia!!! I always love you even more so now!!! O Ethiopia who produced children Negash, Bilal and Mary Magdalene who saved the two major religions of the world, Islam and Christianity! O Ethiopia that showed the world the two major religions can coexist peacefully on the same God given earth!!! O Ethiopia whose gallant children showed the rest of the colored from Africa to Asia and Latin America how to stand up to a colonizer bully and beat the living daylight out of him!!! O Ethiopia! Almighty Our Creator Has Shed His Grace On Thee!!! O Ethiopia My Pride and Joy!!!!
Last week it was our boys and girls at Doha! This is to cap the ice!!! You can’t beat that y’all!!! I’m good now! I’m good for a long time!!! Oooooooooooooooooooooooooweey!!!!!
Ok, the fortnight honeymoon is over young man. Now let’s get back to work. As the over qualified president H.E. Sahle-Work bint Zewde said the prize is for all Ethiopians and make sure bigots among my own ethnic group will not use this moment to dare and mock our proud neighbors. By all means you must avoid ethnicity tinged celebration. That is a must. Your award is paid for by the blood of Oromos, Amharas, Somalis, Afars and many other youths. You MUST remember them and include their sacrifices in your speech. Their Allah given lives and cruel incarcerations that included savage treatments in jail was the only ones that brought you to power and nobody else!!!
In my previous comment on a different article, I have reminded the young PM that the award honeymoon is already over. It is already time to go to work and advised him to avoid any ethnicity tinged rally to celebrate the award. It is no time to party because the Valkyrie has not come out singing yet. The award is the result of an opportunity presented to you after a heavy price paid in human lives and sufferings not by one ethnic group only but rather by many others. One human life is an Allah given life just too many. Avoid such festivities by all means necessary.
The other arguments discrediting the award are just not of any merit at all. They tell us that the peace treaty he signed with Eritrea did not alter the accord inside that country. We should never forget the fact that Eritrea has been a sovereign nation since 1993. Whatever is happening inside their country it will be up to our dear Eritrean citizens to sort it out by themselves. They are extremely industrious people and they knew what they were doing in 1993 and I strongly believe they still know what to do about their current internal affairs. To think otherwise about them is an insult to their intelligence. Their internal affairs were not part of the peace accord and cannot be used to invalidate the prestigious award.
In 1950 Dr. Ralph Bunche was the winner of the same price. He was given a mission by the UN to bring the warring sides of the Arab-Israeli War that erupted in 1948 to a negotiation table. He achieved success that included resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict in the then Palestine, not in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon or Trans Jordan. The internal affairs of the parties in the conflict were not on his to-do list. So he deserved the award. Farouq’s runaway corruption and mistreatment of his people were not Bunche’s business or part of his assignment. He was told to stop the war and he did just that when others failed. Also, Mandela had deservingly won the same award in 1993. Should he be asked to return the award just because of the savage bloody mayhem between the Zulus and ANC supporters in 1990 right after his release from jail, the audacious Guptas scandal since then and the xenophobia that swept his country for a good decade now? Come on!!! Sung San is a different story. She was awarded the prize in 1991’ more than 20 years before she was allowed to come even close to power. Of course she must be taken to task for what has been happening since the day she started cajoling with the juntas.
Ok PM Abiy! This is it! You have been in the office for about 16 months now. You have accumulated tremendous experience from what has happened since then.
1) Places of worship including harmless priests were burned down to the ground in droves since you came to power. Please note that such people were doing nothing but preaching the eternal words of The Almighty. The perpetrators must be hunted down, caught, tried and be given stiff sentences including the death penalty. Timothy McVeigh was shown the gurney here in the Good Ole USA, The Beacon of Hope and Democracy for humanity because he deserved it. These savages should be given the medicine they rightly deserve.
2) You must grab both Obbo Eskinder and Jawar by their ears and summon them to your office. They should be told to cut it. Otherwise, they can travel to Al’Qahirah and duke it out there in front el-Sisi. This is not the time to hold debutantes beauty contest. It is not funny!!!
3) I commend you for citing the relics in Addis/Finfine as the national museum. I know what my own bigots used to tell me what they would do to them after they ‘liberate’ my proud and harmony mongering people. They would have bulldozed each and every one of them to smithereens. When it comes to Menelik I am from the school of the late President Negasso bin Gidada. While I disdain what his policy had done to many of his citizens throughout the country but I as a black man am proud of how he beat the living daylight of a colonizer bully. My grandfather had fought the soldiers of his warlords Abu Shaitan by the foothills of Mount Asabot and the plains of Harbaa(Bordode). There is an age old Itu gerersaa to tell about it. When every chief in the region from Massawa, Djibouti, Berbera, Mogadishu all the way to Cape of Good Hope in the south to the Bay of Senegal in the west to Libya in the north accepted bread crumbs from colonizers put their John Hancock on the dotted lines, my niggaaz under his out of the world diplomacy and courageous leadership, Adwa became where a bully was humiliated and handedly beaten as if he robbed a bank in the frontiers!!! I admire your courage in doing that.
As always, this is my 2 red cents worth of an opinion and in no way meant to offend.