In the absence of rock icon Bob Dylan, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos will be the star of Saturday’s Nobel ceremonies when he receives his Peace Prize in Oslo, crowning an achievement that came close to failing at the finish line.
After a first peace deal rejected by the Colombian people, Santos’s government and the Marxist FARC rebels renegotiated a new peace accord that was signed on November 24 to end a five-decade conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people, left 45,000 missing and forced nearly seven million to flee their homes.
“Something that was for many Colombians and for many Latin-Americans and for the world an impossible dream just a few years ago is now reality,” Santos told reporters in the Norwegian capital on the eve of the prize ceremony.
The peace process had suffered a major setback on October 2 when Colombians narrowly rejected a first peace accord in a referendum.
While the “no” vote appeared to send Santos’s chances of winning the Nobel up in smoke, the Norwegian Nobel Committee stunned world watchers five days later by awarding him the prize, arguing that Colombians had rejected the peace deal but not peace itself.
“It shows that peace is not made in one day,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, deputy chairwoman of the Nobel committee, said on Friday.
The 65-year-old laureate called the prize a “gift from heaven” that gave a “tremendous push” to reach a new agreement with FARC.
“People in Colombia interpreted it as a mandate from the international community to persevere, to continue striving to achieve a peace agreement,” Santos said.
“It encouraged me, it encouraged our negotiators, but particularly it encouraged the Colombian people to press” for a new deal, he said.
The peace deal, amended to include proposals from the opposition, calls for the rebels’ disarmament and FARC’s transformation into a political movement.
The Peace Prize will be presented early on Saturday afternoon at Oslo’s City Hall at a ceremony attended by the royal family, members of the Norwegian government, representatives of victims of the conflict, and two high-profile former FARC hostages, Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas.
The Nobel prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and a cheque for eight million Swedish kronor (824,000 euros, $871,000), a sum Santos promised to donate to the victims of the war.
