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07 October 2016•Update: 08 October 2016
LONDON
Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday despite Columbians rejecting a peace deal with the FARC in a recent referendum, the Norwegian Nobel prize committee announced in Oslo.
According to a committee spokeswoman, Santos’ “endeavors to promote peace demonstrate the spirit of Alfred Nobel’s will.” According to televised comments, which were also streamed on the official Nobel website, she said the president “brought the bloody conflict significantly closer to a peaceful solution.
“The committee hopes that the peace prize will give him strength to succeed in this demanding task."
Santos accepted the award on behalf of all Colombians. “This is for the victims-and so we don’t have any more victims, no more deaths. We should reconcile and unite to complete this process, and start a stable and lasting peace,” he said in a statement.
The Colombian government led by Santos had signed a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as FARC, to bring an end to the 52-year war in the country. Talks on the deal began in Cuba in November 2011 and ran for almost four years before an agreement was reached last month. The deal was formally signed Sept. 26 to great fanfare before international dignitaries.
When Santos put the agreement to a national referendum, however, Colombians went to polls Sunday and rejected the deal with 50.2 percent of the vote. The result was seen as a failure of the Colombian government to reverse citizens’ widespread distrust of the rebel FARC.
When the prize committee spokeswoman was asked whether awarding the prize to the president was disrespectful to Colombian democracy, especially since the Colombian people had rejected the deal in a referendum, she claimed Colombians have "not rejected the peace itself" but only "the specifics of the peace deal." Negotiating teams have returned to Cuba to try to tweak the deal in order to get it to pass a nationwide vote.
Asked why FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, alias Timochenko, who was also involved in the peace negotiations, did not receive the prize, she said: “We never comment on those who do not receive the award."
Timochenko issued a statement via Twitter that congratulated Santos and all involved, without whose help he said “would be impossible to achieve the peace”. He said earlier Friday “the only award we aspire is peace with justice for Colombia”.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also congratulated Santos, “I extend my best wishes on behalf of our country to President Juan Manuel Santos for winning the Nobel Prize for his brave efforts on trying to bring peace to Colombia,” he told reporters at the State Department.
The award established by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel in 1895 comes with a prize worth 8 million Swedish krona ($937,000).
The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, which played a key role in facilitating talks between different parties in the country's post revolution government.
