The 1980 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, of Argentina, a human rights leader who founded non-violent human rights organizations to fight the military junta that was ruling his country. Esquivel’s movement arose from Catholic liberation theology. He said, in his Nobel lecture: “It is the faces of our workers, peasants, young, old, indigenous, and children that are the face of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who calls us to the obligation to love our brothers and sisters. . . . The poor will not now be seen as objects of charity, as isolated individuals, but as products of a system of structures of injustice that produce marginalization, misery, and hunger for our people.”
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes created by the Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel. Since 1901 it has been awarded annually (with some exceptions) to those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” Over the next few months we’ll be introducing you to the past Nobel laureates, leading up to the award of the 2016 prize in October.
