Many were critical with the Norwegian Academy
decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Barak Obama in October 2009. For
them, the brand new President of the United States did not deserve it. The
academy justified this award stating that: “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.”[1]
Obviously the main criticism to the granting of
this award, the third given to a U.S. president in office - the former were to
Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919 - was the absence of
visible merits. Obama had had not enough time to do much except giving his
brilliant speeches. Proponents argued that the award more than a recognition of
a work was intended to be an "incentive".
In any case, not all Nobel Peace prizes can be
considered up to historical figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. (1964) ,
Willy Brandt (1971), Andrei Sakharov (1975), Mother Teresa (1979), Lech Walesa
(1983), Aung San Suu Kyi (1991), Nelson Mandela (1993 ) or institutions such as
the International Committee of the Red Cross (1917 and 1963) , the Nansen
International Office for Refugees (1938 ), Amnesty International (1977) , the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1981) , the Peace Corps of the
United Nations (1988) , etc. Generally, this prize aims to reward not
only an exemplary and difficult personal life or a shared effort to end
conflict, but also encourage actions to promote peace.
This year’s award to the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons fits this last aspiration. The use of chemical
weapons aggravates the situation of victims subject to the injustice and pain
that war causes. This institution tries to solve it with great difficulty. Its
short intervention in Syria has served to remind us that chemical weapons are
still used. A scourge that we have been suffering since the First World War
when the first bombs were dropped. Bombs that, even today, are being eliminated
in France .
Who can forget the image of that small Vietnamese
girl running naked after being the victim of napalm or the corpse of a Kurdish
father trying to protect his baby in Halabja? These weapons of mass
destruction do not distinguish between civilians and military, its effects are
wide and their impact is difficult to contain. The result is a cruel agony that
provides no other military benefit than weaken the enemy's morale even more.
A morale that in the case of the Syrian rebels
remains high, despite all odds and despite that Bashar al-Assad has shown, once
again, with his characteristic cynicism, his real opinion about the
organization that will oversee the dismantling of its chemical weapons, saying
that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Syrian president has not given in voluntarily
to this issue but it has for the pressure of his Russian ally. Moscow was well
aware that its stubborn refusal in the Security Council of the United Nations
to any action against Assad would eventually be overtaken by events on the
ground. A goodwill gesture by Syria may allow time for Russian diplomacy but,
above all, for the Assad clan and their acolytes, who in view of the fall of
all dictators in neighbouring countries know that they have little time left in
power. A gesture that instead wastes the precious time of the Syrian victims.
While their blood covers their territory, the luckiest seek refuge in the
crowded camps in neighbouring countries. A first step that will lead to hell as
did to the shipwrecked of Lampedusa.
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