BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his efforts to end Latin America’s longest-running armed conflict, an honor that came just five days after voters dealt him a stunning blow by rejecting a peace deal with leftist rebels.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Santos for his “resolute” attempts to stop a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 Colombians and displaced millions since the 1960s. But in a departure from its tradition of honoring both sides of a peace process, the five-member committee conspicuously left out Santos’ counterpart, rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, from the honor.
Santos, 65, dedicated the prize to his fellow Colombians, especially victims of the bloody conflict, and said it redoubles his commitment to ending hostilities, something he said he would work toward for the rest of his life.
Santos and Londono – leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – signed a peace deal last month to end the conflict after more than four years of negotiations in Cuba.
But on Sunday, voters rejected the deal by the narrowest of margins – less than half a percentage point.
– over concerns that the rebels, who are widely loathed by Colombians for committing scores of atrocities, were getting a sweetheart deal.
Under the accord, rebels who turn over their weapons and confess their crimes would be spared jail, and the group would be reserved seats in congress to help smooth its transition to a political movement.
“The referendum was not a vote for or against peace,” the Nobel committee said Friday, insisting the peace process wasn’t dead. “What the ‘No’ side rejected was not the desire for peace, but a specific peace agreement.”
Santos, the Harvard-educated scion of one of Colombia’s wealthiest families, is an unlikely peacemaker. As defense minister a decade ago, he was responsible for some of the biggest military setbacks for the rebels. Those included a 2008 cross-border raid into Ecuador that took out a top rebel commander and the stealth rescue of three Americans held captive by the rebels for more than five years.
Nobel committee secretary Olav Njoelstad said there was “broad consensus” on picking Santos as this year’s laureate – the first time the peace prize has gone to Latin America since 1992, when Guatemalan indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu won. It is Colombia’s second Nobel honor after beloved novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the prize for literature in 1982.
Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, reacted coolly to the award on Twitter by saying “the only prize to which we aspire” is one of social justice for Colombia, without far-right militias, retaliation or lies. He later congratulated Santos, as well as Cuba, Norway, Venezuela and Chile, which helped facilitate the talks.
Santos also was congratulated by former President Alvaro Uribe, whose U.S.-backed military offensive is widely credited with forcing the FARC into negotiations. Uribe, a hard-line conservative, led the “No” campaign against the peace deal.
“I hope it leads to a change in the accords that are damaging for our democracy,” he said on Twitter about the prize.
The award is likely to give new momentum to the peace process, putting pressure on Uribe to rally behind a solution and encouraging the FARC to show greater flexibility after initially dismissing the referendum’s results as legally irrelevant.
