The peace agreement in Colombia ending a more than half-century long conflict was “a ray of hope” in a troubled world, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said yesterday on accepting the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, Santos said his country and its nearly 50mn people “are turning the impossible into the possible” referring to the recent peace deal between the state and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which succeeded despite its initial rejection in a plebiscite.
Santos underlined that the October 7 award announcement, just four days after the plebiscite result, “was the tailwind that helped us to reach our destination — the port of peace!”
The revised agreement that was recently passed by the Colombian Congress meant that “the American continent — from Alaska to Patagonia — is a land in peace,” he said at Oslo City Hall.
In his speech, Santos said he accepted the award on behalf of the Colombian people and, most importantly, the victims.
More than 220,000 were killed in the conflict with the Farc rebels.
“It proves that what, at first, seems impossible, through perseverance may become possible even in Syria or Yemen or South Sudan,” he added.
Santos also dedicated the award to the negotiators — from the government as well as Farc — who participated in talks in Cuba that ran for several years, as well as members of the armed forces, and the international community.
A likely legacy from the Colombia peace process was the “agreement on a model of transitional justice that enables us to secure a maximum justice without sacrificing peace,” he said.
In his remarks he outlined challenges ahead, including tackling drug trafficking that partly fuelled Farc’s war, clearing landmines and changing the mindset in the country through education.
Several victims of the over 50-year long conflict were present at yesterday’s award ceremony, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was held hostage for six years until 2008 by Farc.
Another was Leyner Palacios who lost 32 relatives including his parents and three brothers in a Farc mortar attack 2002 on a church in his home town, Bojay,  killing almost 80 people.
In his speech, Santos referred to 1982 Colombian Nobel Literature Prize laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez and several former peace prize laureates as well as this year’s Nobel Literature Laureate Bob Dylan.
Earlier, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Santos was “a driving force throughout this peace process.”
The peace prize is one of the awards endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. In accordance with Nobel’s will, the peace prize is handed out in Oslo.
Each prize is worth 8mn Swedish kronor ($930,000).




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