Former US president Jimmy Carter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, is a soft-spoken, onetime Washington outsider who not only made it into the White House but carried on afterwards to earn broad praise as a global mediator and humanitarian.
The Nobel committee said on Friday that awarding the prize to Carter, was a ”criticism of the position” of the current US administration.
Honouring Carter ”can also be interpreted as a criticism of the position” of the administration of President George W. Bush, the chairman of the Nobel committee, Gunnar Berge, told reporters
Known for his broad, toothy grin, the low-key statesman who celebrated his 78th birthday on October 1 started out as a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia. He arrived at the White House in 1977, but his administration hit numerous snags, including the Iran hostage crisis.
His endorsement of solar energy and reversal of US government tolerance for right-wing dictatorships by embarking on a worldwide human rights crusade failed to boost his popularity at the time. The brief shining moment of his single term as 39th president of the United States came with the 1979 signing of the Camp David accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt.
But once out of the White House, Carter, then aged 56, launched an ambitious program to fight for social justice, setting up the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia to promote the causes he had championed as president.
”The Carter Center is doing a remarkable job in agricultural assistance and medical assistance in places like Africa,” said Irwin Adams, the retired professor who nominated Carter for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995, one of several such nominations.
As well as championing a host of domestic causes, he has emerged as a prominent international mediator, tackling some of the same issues that troubled his presidency.
Carter went to North Korea in 1994 to ease a standoff between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington over North Korea’s alleged production of nuclear weapons. He also tried to jump-start the peace process in Bosnia-Hercegovina by cobbling together a four-month ceasefire starting in January 1995.
Since then, he has participated in election monitoring in Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and East Timor. He has also given input to heads of state in the forming of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
In December 1998, Carter was presented with the first United Nations Human Rights Prize on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
And in August 1999, former president Bill Clinton presented him and his wife Rosalynn with the highest US civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Last May, Carter made a historic trip to Cuba, meeting face-to-face with longtime communist leader Fidel Castro to prod him on the thorny issue of human rights and push for political opening — but at the same time urged Washington to reconsider more than four decades of economic sanctions that Carter argued must go.
Born James Earl Carter in Archery, Georgia on October 1, 1924, Carter married Rosalynn Smith in 1946. The couple have three sons and a daughter. – Sapa-AFP