NORWAY: Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus urges world to fight poverty

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday (December 10) and urged world leaders to get on with the fight against poverty and stop wasting money on wars like the one in Iraq. Yunus, nicknamed "banker to the poor", and the Grameen Bank that he founded won the peace prize for their work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans to the poorest of the poor, especially women in rural Bangladesh. Yunus and Grameen Bank's representative Mosammat Taslima Begum received gold medals and diplomas at the ceremony at Oslo's City Hall to applause from about 1,000 guests, including King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway. "By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace." the first Bangladeshi peace laureate said in his acceptance speech. The prize created by the Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel comes with a cheque for 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.47 million) to be shared by the winners. The laureates were announced in October. Yunus and Grameen Bank won the peace award -- which has traditionally gone to statesmen, peace-brokers, human rights advocates and humanitarian organisations . He said the new millennium began with a dream to cut poverty in half by 2015 as agreed by world leaders in the U.N. millennium goals in 2000. "The new millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size. But then came September 11 and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream, with the attention of world leaders shifting from the war on poverty to the war on terrorism. Till now over $ 530 billion has been spent on the war in Iraq by the USA alone I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action. Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest language. We must stand solidly against it, and find all the means to end it. We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns," Yunus said. Their work lending small sums to help start businesses from basket weaving to chicken farming has pioneered a movement known as "microcredit" which has spread around the globe. The bank is owned by its clients and counts thousands of beggars among them. "We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it. We create what we want" Yunus concluded. Yunus who began the microcredit movement with a $27 loan to a group of 42 villagers who had fallen victim to extortionate money-lenders. Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the group sought to shine a light not only on the fight against poverty but also on dialogue with the Muslim world and on empowering women. "I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums," Yunus said. Later on Sunday, Yunus appeared at the balcony of a hotel in Oslo waving to an enthusiastic crowd who braved the cold weather to pay tribute to the Nobel peace prize.

ITN Source | December 11, 2006

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