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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:19 am Post subject: A Crappy Monday - and a Great Friday |
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Well, it started out as a crappy Monday what with North Korea...but the Nobel Committee has made it a great Friday. ANOTHER well-deserved Nobel! 
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Poverty fighter wins Nobel peace prize
Oct. 13, 2006. 06:38 AM
DOUG MELLGREN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
OSLO, Norway (AP) � Bangladeshi microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their work in advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, particularly women.
The economist and the bank he founded will share the prize. They were cited for their efforts to help �create economic and social development from below� in their home country by using innovative economic programs such as microcredit lending.
Grameen Bank has been instrumental in helping millions of poor Bangladeshis, many of them women, improve their standard of living by letting them borrow small sums to start businesses. Loans go toward buying items such as cows to start a dairy, chickens for an egg business, or mobile phones to start businesses where villagers who have no access to phones pay a small fee to make calls.
�Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life. Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,� the Nobel Committee said in its citation.
Reached by the Nobel foundation, Yunus was excited about winning the prize. �I�m absolutely delighted. I cannot believe that it has really happened,� he said by telephone. �Everyone was telling me that I would get the prize but it came as a surprise. It is fantastic news for the people that have supported us.�
Yunus has drawn praise for advancing microcredit, which has been credited with helping poor women to advance their lives and pull them out of poverty. Microcredit is the extension of small loans, typically $50 to $100, to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.
Ole Danbolt Mjoes, chairman of the committee, told The Associated Press that Yunus� efforts have had visible results. �We are saying microcredit is an important contribution that cannot fix everything, but is a big help,� Mjoes said, adding that Yunus is a �smart guy. He is creative. His head is in the right place.�
Mjoes recounted that Yunus himself lent $30, divided among 42 people, in 1976, to help them buy weaving stools. �Then they got the weaving stools quickly, they started to weave quickly and they repaid him quickly,� he said.
In its citation, the committee noted that �economic growth and political democracy can not achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male,� the committee said. Grameen Bank, which was founded by Yunus, provides credit to ``the poorest of the poor� in rural Bangladesh, without any collateral, according to its website.
�At GB, credit is a cost effective weapon to fight poverty and it serves as a catalyst in the overall development of socio-economic conditions of the poor who have been kept outside the banking orbit on the ground that they are poor and hence not bankable,� the committee said. The bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 per cent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh.
Yunus and the bank will share in the $1.6 million prize as well as a gold medal and diploma. |
Grameen Bank website. |
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riley
Joined: 08 Feb 2003
Location: where creditors can find me
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 4:33 am Post subject: |
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| Yeah, that is good. I read about that happening in Mexico (I think) also. It sounded rather successful. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 4:44 am Post subject: |
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| An admirable effort and a well deserved honour... |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:59 pm Post subject: |
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| a former classmate of mine works for an affiliate of the Grameen Bank in DC. Apparently they're trying to try it out throughout the developing world; her dept. focuses on the M.East and North Africa. |
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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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I was delighted to hear Orhan Pamuk has won the Nobel for literature.
He's a very interesting writer--I just finished "My Name Is Red" |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 9:09 pm Post subject: |
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| i found his book "snow" to be a bore. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 10:53 pm Post subject: |
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For the sake of debate (I know little of the subject), here is the opinion of The Economist on the NPP.
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Losing its lustre
Oct 13th 2006
From The Economist Global Agenda
An anti-poverty campaigner and a bank in Bangladesh have won this year�s Nobel Peace Prize. The purpose of the prize has become muddled. It may be better to withhold it next time.
BRAVERY is a characteristic shared by most winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. On Friday October 13th, the Norwegian part of the Nobel Institute (a Swedish body that dishes out the other coveted prizes, for science and literature) named the recipient of the 2006 peace award. An unofficial shortlist included a pair of Irish rock stars who have received a lot of attention for trying to promote development in Africa, a Finnish diplomat who works at the UN and who has lobbied for peace in Indonesia and a Vietnamese Buddhist. In fact the award was given to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen bank in Bangladesh, which promotes lending to the poorest, especially women.
But the Nobel committee could have made a braver, more difficult, choice by declaring that there would be no recipient at all. That might ruin a good party�each year the lucky winner (who also gets a cash prize of $1.3m or so) is honoured with a lavish award ceremony in Oslo, Norway's capital, given a commemorative medal, and attention is shone on his particular good cause. Some recent examples include a campaign to ban landmines; the promotion of peace in Northern Ireland; efforts to bring democracy to Myanmar (which used to be called Burma).
Withholding the prize for a year, or possibly five, might seem rather callous. But the institute would not be suggesting that the world has become sufficiently peaceful now. Some do argue that wars are generally in decline. Last year a think-tank in Canada released a �Human Security Report� which noted that 100-odd wars have expired since 1988. Their study found that wars and genocides have become less frequent since 1991, that the value of the international arms trade has slumped by a third (between 1990 and 2003), and that refugee numbers have roughly halved (between 1992 and 2003). Yet, despite all that, there are clearly enough problems today�Darfur, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, international terrorism�to keep the hardest-working peace promoters busy.
The reason for the institute to withhold the prize, instead, would be to preserve its value. There is a risk that its worth is being eroded as the institute scrambles to find an eye-catching recipient every year. There is the problem of Buggin's turn, an expectation (as with some other prizes) that the award should rotate between regions of the world. This year it is Asia, last year the recipient was from the Middle East, the year before from Africa.
Some recipients seem less than deserving. Vietnam�s Le Duc Tho declined the award in 1973 when he was asked to share it with America�s Henry Kissinger. The two had signed a ceasefire agreement that year, but fighting continued in Vietnam for another two years. The recent decision to give the prize to a Kenyan environmentalist, Wangari Maathai, was also odd: she has done a lot to plant trees in Kenya, but not much to promote peace. Worse, she holds bizarre views on AIDS, suggesting that HIV was created by evil scientists to kill black people. This year�s winner is an admirable anti-poverty campaigner, but it is a stretch to call him or the Grameen bank peacemakers.
In searching out individuals to praise for a variety of good deeds, to make celebrities of the well-meaning in various walks of life, is to confuse the purpose of the prize: to promote peace. The organisers could recall that on 19 occasions since the prize was first given out in 1901, the institute declared that it could find no fitting winner. During much of the first and second world wars, for example, no winner was named. But the last time the institute dared to do that was in 1972. What has changed since then, one might suspect, is that the institute has found it has a great need�for marketing purposes perhaps�to give out the prize. The challenge, for the next few years, will be to find the bravery to hold back. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:11 am Post subject: |
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| good article, and good idea. It does seem like they're grasping for straws sometimes. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 6:41 pm Post subject: |
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I agree with them that it should only be awarded when someone actually deserves it. I was very surprised to learn that a development bank won the peace prize. Not to lessen what they do, but, it is development work not peace making/keeping (the two are related, but separate).
Maybe there should be a development prize? |
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