OSLO, STOCKHOLM (dpa) – UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo display Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the United Nations United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan stressed the unity of mankind as he accepted the Peace Prize at ceremonies in Oslo on behalf of himself and his international organization.
The secretary general described humanity as indivisible and called for global cooperation in fighting poverty, ignorance and disease. He also warned of continued security threats such as the September terrorist attacks in the United States and urged respect for human rights.
The Norwegian Nobel committee that announced the award in October said it honors efforts to achieve peace and security in the world.
More than two dozen past recipients of the prize attended the presentation. Among them were Tibet’s spiritual leader in exile, the Dalai Lama, former Polish President Lech Walesa, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Guatemalan campaigner for indigenous peoples’ human rights, Rigoberta Menchu.
In Burma, about 500 members of the country’s National League for Democracy gathered in the capital, Rangoon, to mark the 10th anniversary of the presentation of the peace prize to their leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Nobel laureate has been under house arrest for most of the last decade. Her party won a landslide victory in Burma’s 1990 parliamentary elections, but the country’s military rulers refused to step down.
In Stockholm, Swedish King Karl Gustav presented the Literature prize to British author V.S. Naipaul and the prizes in economics, medicine and the sciences to 12 laureates from Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States.
The prizes, which were created by Swedish industrialist inventor of dinamite Alfred Nobel in his will, includes an award of 10 million Swedish kroner ($950,000).
The first peace prize was awarded in 1901 to the Swiss founder of the International Red Cross, Jean Henri Dunant, and French peace campaigner Frederic Passy, who founded the French peace society Ligue internationale et permanente de la paix, later known as Societe francaise pour l’arbitrage entre nations).
