Will the Nobel Prize help Colombia?

The country’s president has won the peace prize despite not actually making peace yet

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos speaks to supporters of the peace deal he signed with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, at the presidential palace in Bogota (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
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Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, has been awarded the Nobel peace prize, despite the notable disadvantage, critics noted, of not yet having secured peace with the Farc. Perhaps that is a touch unfair: after all, Mr Santos came within a whisker of succeeding – his referendum on the peace deal was rejected by a disheartening 0.4 per cent margin. He has vowed to keep going with the peace deal.

But awarding the prize to Mr Santos takes the prize back to its origins, rewarding those who seek peace in difficult conflicts. It has been a while since a similar award was made, not since David Trimble and John Hume won the prize for the Northern Ireland peace process in 1998.

In the years since, the Nobel peace prize has waxed and waned in relevance. The prizes themselves, including the peace prize, are very much an Atlantic love-affair. The overwhelming majority of prizes have gone to just five countries: the US, UK, France, Germany and Sweden.

In the modern era, the peace prize has sometimes seemed to have been awarded for potential rather than achievement. Barack Obama’s prize in 2009, a few months after becoming president, is still widely mocked. After his failures in Syria, it seems bizarre. The following year, when the prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a worthy Chinese dissident, it seemed designed more to needle China than anything else. And giving the 2013 award to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, after a chemical weapons attack in Syria, proves how narrow the prize’s perspective can be: there have been chlorine attacks on civilians in the years since, and the war has continued to kill tens of thousands through conventional means.

It remains to be seen what effect, if any, the prize will have in Colombia. It seems more a moral fillip than anything else, a recognition by the outside, mainly western, world that the movement towards peace is welcome. Had the White Helmets in Syria, another group that was trailed as a possible winner, actually won, it would perhaps have only added to the pressure on those who still support the Assad regime. It is unlikely to have helped the citizens of Aleppo in the short term.

The work of peace is long, hard and thankless. It takes place in small rooms, far from cameras and stages. While the prize is welcome publicity, it cannot take the place of real political pressure.