They selected Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank for their work to bring microloans to underdeveloped nations, and giving the extremely poor the opportunity to obtain low cost loans so that they can start businesses and otherwise raise their standards of living.
Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, whose system of micro-credit loans reshaped development efforts in poor nations, won the Nobel Peace Prize today, along with the bank he founded.It's amazing what loans of $100 or $50 can do for a person where a person might ordinarily live on $100 a month. Often the World Bank and other organizations would provide money to the countries where such people lived, and the leaders would get rich, while the poor saw little or no change in their standard of living. By providing these loans, Yunus gives the money to those people directly, and can improve the standard of living to millions.
Yunus, 66, founded Grameen Bank in 1976, and was praised by the Norwegian Nobel Committee yesterday as a man who paved the way for helping economic development among the poorest of his nation -- particularly among rural women.
Yunus was something of a surprise winner in a large field of nominees that included diplomats who brokered peace deals in hotspots like Indonesia's troubled Aceh Province and global celebrities like U2 lead singer and development advocate Bono.
But in awarding the $1.36 million prize to the Vanderbilt University-trained economist, the committee said his work showed that "even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development."
One can only hope that this is a start of a new trend in awarding the prize to people who do real good in the world, but I doubt that.
UPDATE:
Others noting Yunus' achievement: Secular Blasphemy, Fausta, The Glittering Eye, Say Anything, and Through the Magnifying Glass (who notes that Cindy Sheehan did not win),
Technorati: yunus, Grameen Bank, nobel prize, peace prize.
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