Tunisian democracy group wins Nobel Peace Prize

There is deep pride over winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.As history professor Habib Kazdaghli of the University of Tunis in Manouba said in October of 2013, the national dialogue “occurred only because it was preceded by a series of painstaking consultations and preliminary conversations with Tunisia’s various political factions”. How has the country managed its transition to democracy where so many others have failed?

Tunisian protesters sparked uprisings across the Arab world in 2011 that overthrew dictators and upset the status quo.

The Quartet consists of the Tunisian General Labour Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers, as reported by the Nobel Committee’s official website.

“The UGTT in Tunisia were the people who sustained the revolution and then as part of the National Dialogue Quartet mobilized and negotiated the country’s democratic transition while avoiding the level of bloodshed suffered in other countries during the Arab Spring”.

Charrad said the prize was being awarded to the Quartet as a whole, instead of to each contributing organization. Yet the contrast with the Tunisian quartet should help us understand that such efforts succeed when they use the credibility of their members equally to achieve a wider goal through a genuinely consultative process anchored in the rule of law and equal rights for all – whether citizens in Tunisia or Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.

“These rights, and the dialogue through which they were achieved, is what the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize is recognising”.

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.

In the past, students participated in an exchange program with Egypt or Jordan, but following the award, Tunisia may become a more attractive country for UT students to study in, according to Charrad.

“We must put an end to the delivery of weapons to barbarian militia where they have transformed entire countries into theatres of war – with the aim of halting democratisation”.

“However, students should know that this award does not resolve all problems for Tunisia”, Charrad said. They made regular compromises among those in authority, including rotating power and voluntarily relinquishing the premiership; ensured that major decisions reflected inclusive consultations among all political actors and the public; and patiently phased in all major steps toward their democracy.

There were 273 candidates nominated for the 2015 peace prize, five fewer than in 2014. Sweden’s central bank added the economics prize in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel. It’s also pointless to observe that Tunisia’s government, with its elements of both the old regime and the Islamist one, is not the kind of reformist democracy Westerners might prefer.

38 people were killed in the attack and most were British tourists.

The Nobel committee noted that in many of those countries the pro-democracy struggle has come to a standstill.