The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to serving heads of state or government several times since the honour was first handed out in 1901.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos receives it Saturday for his “resolute” efforts to end five decades of war in his country, as enshrined in a historic peace accord signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Here are the precedents for Santos’ honour:
2011: ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF
She was one of three women laureates along with Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen. The committee highlighted “their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”.
2009: BARACK OBAMA
He was a surprise winner for his “extraordinary” diplomatic efforts on the international stage, just nine months after he took office.
The Nobel committee attached “special importance to Obama’s vision and work for a world without nuclear weapons” and said he had created “a new climate in international politics”.
2000: KIM DAE JUNG
He was a pro-democracy campaigner who became president of South Korea between 1998 and 2003. He won the prize in 2000, the year he helped organise a landmark reconciliation summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. Kim Dae-Jung died in 2006.
1994: YITZHAK RABIN
Rabin, Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat jointly won the prize for their efforts to reach a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, resulting in the Oslo Agreement in 1993. At the time Rabin was prime minister and Peres foreign minister of Israel, while Arafat was later elected president of the Palestinian National Authority.
Their goal still eludes world leaders today however.
1993: F.W. DE KLERK
As president of South Africa, de Klerk was instrumental in ending his country’s white-minority apartheid system and paving the way for majority rule. His government released from prison the man who succeeded him, African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. The two won the prize jointly in 1993.
1990: MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
He was awarded the peace prize in October 1990. The reforms in part inspired by Gorbachev led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the reunification of Germany the following year and the effective dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
1987: OSCAR ARIAS SANCHEZ
The president of Costa Rica won for his work on ending the civil wars that afflicted several central American states in the 1970s and 80s.
1978: ANWAR AL-SADAT AND MENACHEM BEGIN
The Egyptian president and Israeli prime minister signed the Camp David Accords in September 1978; they led to a peace deal between the two main belligerents in several Middle Eastern wars, but were followed by Sadat’s assassination three years later.
US president Jimmy Carter, who presided over the deal, was to also win the prize in 2002, after he had left office.
1971: WILLY BRANDT
Brandt was chancellor of West Germany — one of the two German states that emerged after World War II — when he won in 1971. Brandt, a social democrat, was awarded the prize for his “Ostpolitik”, or policy of reconciliation with East Germany. The two states reunited to form the present-day republic of Germany in 1990. (AFP)
