Did Obama really deserve the Nobel Peace prize?

Stolen and edited from the Independent; worth a read:


Greg Mortenson: Mountaineer fighting Islamic extremism with education

Following a failed attempt to climb K2 in Pakistan in 1993, Greg Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt and writing with sticks in the sand. He promised to build them a school. It seemed, he says, a "rash" promise.

The story of what happened next is told in Mr Mortenson's book, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time, a bestseller now required reading for military leaders as well as for humanitarians. His Central Asia Institute has built 84 schools in the region, educating mainly girls, and Mr Mortenson, 51, has become a tireless advocate of the need to build human relationships with the Muslim world. His mantra: politics won't bring peace, people will bring peace.

"These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world," he says. "We focus on areas where there is no education. Religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict."

In 2009 alone, he has been awarded Pakistan's highest civilian award, the Star of Pakistan, and a half dozen other humanitarian gongs but, for this year at least, he failed to land the biggest one of all.


Denis Mukwege: Doctor dedicated to helping rape victims in the Congo

Sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo is at appalling levels - ask the 27,000 victims of rape reported in a single year in a single province, or the 70 per cent of the women of one town who had been brutally assaulted.

Dr Denis Mukwege is affected in a different way. He has dedicated his life to dealing with those abused, seeing an average of 10 women a day, in his surgery in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, the province where the first statistic was recorded. Many have travelled hundreds of miles.

"Generally the victims are raped by several men at a time, one after another; in public, in front of parents, husbands, children or neighbours. Rape is followed by mutilations or other corporal torture."

So far in his career, he has treated 21,000 women. His pioneering work has helped thousands of these women reclaim something of their physical selves and begin to heal some of the psychological wounds. His tireless dedication has not been easy, his ward burned to the ground in 1996 during the first civil war.

"Here it is not rape because you have desire for a woman, it's rape because you want to destroy that person through her private parts," he said recently. "There is no appropriate expression, because if these were men, were shot by a gun, we would call it genocide. But it is another type of genocide."


Wei Jingsheng: The father of Chinese democracy

For a Chicago community organiser to rise far enough to receive the Nobel Prize is fairly remarkable; had a former electrician at Beijing Zoo been so honoured, the recognition would have been truly extraordinary.

Wei Jingsheng, has come far from his humble beginnings as an electrician at Beijing zoo. 2009 was his 7th nomination for the Peace prize for his work fighting for democratic rights in China. Mr Wei once served as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. Much has changed since then, following Jingsheng's realisation of the true China under the rule of Mao Zedong. He was jailed for 18 years before international pressure forced his release in 1997.

His prison sentence was for taking part in the "Democracy Wall" movement in 1978, when students and activists displayed uncensored news and dissenting opinions on a brick wall near Tiananmen Square, just as the Red Guards had done themselves during the Cultural Revolution. During imprisonment, he wrote open letters to the regime on toilet paper that were smuggled out and published, making him a figurehead for democratic campaigners. He was released in 1993 but refused to be silenced. That determination led to another jail sentence, this time for 14 years.

But by then, Mr Wei had powerful backers. Bill Clinton intervened, and he was released in November 1997 and allowed to fly to the US on medical grounds, shorthand for exile. His 1997 book, The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings, is seen as one of the classics of Chinese dissident literature.


I already believed Obama has not done nearly enough to warrant the prize. Reading this only confirmed by view. The judges claimed that it was Obama's 'intentions' that won him the prize. All the other nominees have good intentions and have done for many years, the key difference being that they've already put them into practice. I would love to see Obama win the prize in 10 years, but currently he does not deserve this accolade.