NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: 1997

Jody Williams and International Campaign to Ban Landmines

Today I’ll talk about Nobel Peace Prize, in particular about the person who won this prize in 1997. In ’97 this award was given to Jody Williams and to the campaign she worked for, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). Jody Williams is an American teacher, that worked in Mexico, United Kingdom and Washington DC. She worked for the “Nicaragua-Honduras Education Project” until 1986, and became deputy director of “Medical Aid for El Salvador”. From 1992 she worked in a new project, the ICBL. This organization signed a treaty in Ottawa, in 1997. This was an important achievement for Williams and ICBL, although United States, Russian Federation and China refrained.

The main secret of Williams’ work is the use of people power. As she said, she coordinate the work of hundreds organization, each that work independent from others. She talked with each organization about campaign planning, programs, actions… she didn’t send any letter to them, but she sent faxes to everyone, and they fax back to her. Each organization wrote faxes to her about their work, their progress and their problems. Doing this, she could see the progress of the organization from the first day of work.

The Ottawa Treaty that member states signed commits to end the suffering caused by antipersonnel mines, and the states members are agree to follow some obligations; for example they will not use, develop, produce or acquire antipersonnel mines, they’ll destroy mines and clear their territory from mines, they’ll aid mine-affected countries. I think this is very important for civilian people, that could not be involved in any war, and above all this preclude the injure of children because of mines.

This is a step forward for the peace in the world, but I’d like to remember that world powers like USA, China and Russian Federation didn’t agree with this treaty: I think Supremacy sometimes don’t get on well with Human Rights…

M

Nobel peace prize 1998

The award was established following the last will of Alfred Nobel Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite. The first award ceremony dates back to 1901, when were delivered the price for peace, literature, chemistry, medicine and physics. Since 1969 there is also the prize for Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( even if he did not wanted it ). The award ceremony is on December 10, the anniversary of the death of the founder. Nobel invented this price because of the discomfort caused to hiself by his invention, dynamite, which had powerful implications of war. Its purpose was and still is to fund with private funds people who are more distinct in the subjects mentioned above.
In 1998 the Nobel Peace Prize was given to John Hume and David Trimble, two Irish politicians who are strongly committed to peace between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland
Hume lived in a little town in Northen Ireland, he was educated by a catholic family and he wanted to become a priest. But after the master he stops theological studies and he decided to become a teacher, he became a politician only in 1960.
Trimble on the contrary grew in a protestant family in a town near Belfast, he studied in this towns for a lot of years. When he became Laws professor at the Queen's University of Belfalast he assisted in a shootout where one of his colleagues died, murdered by members of IRA, so he decided to commit to peace in Ireland.
These two men with their choices have risked their lives to defend the right ideals of justice and peace, and for their commitment they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998

Environment: problems and solutions

I ever thought that men exploit the world and its resources without any limit. We waste a lot of water, food and energy. Today water is sold by the “water companies”, and we must pay a free resource like the water, that shouldn’t be “private”. Despite this, in 2006, are died 30,000 people because of the lack of water. Nowadays, in some countries of the world, there are many conflicts because of the water. I think the water is one of the human rights. For this reason I think that the water should be distribute in a better way, and we should be reduce the waste of water too. I can do the same reasoning for the food, that we waste in our developed countries, and in others continents, for example in Africa, many people die because of the food.

Furthermore, we spend a lot of energy, too energy, and doing this we damage our planet, our home… because the planet is our house, and we should respect it as we respect our things. Today we use too non-renewable resources, like fossil fuels (Petroleum, natural gas), radioactive fuels (Nuclear energy)and metals. This is a big problem for the planet, because these types of resources will finish; moreover many of them are responsible of the pollution, jointly the big and small industries. We can solve this problem, for example employing renewable resources, like wind energy, photovoltaic energy, hydropower, and reducing the big waste of energy and resources.

M

Preserve our environment

Our envirnment is every day more in danger because we continue to pollute it with a lot of bad actions,but we don't care about it. Nothing is important if it does not concern us directly. But our world must be important. We must find a solution to preserve all, flora and fauna, water and earth. One of the temes of this last year,was how we waste water. Water is the most important thing for all forms of life, and we are including. But we are also the only that waste a lot of water uselessly. There is a very hight number of peoples that live wasting water (and these peoples live in Europe and north America). There is also an hight number of peoples who die everyday because have not enough water. This happens because developed countries continue to use the old and polluting technologies because are not as expensives as the news technologies (like the solar or the wind energy). But with choices like this everyday we lose someting that we'll need in the future. Today is water, but tomorrow could be oxygen. With cleans technologies on the contrary we preserve water and air, because they work with the power of the sun and of the wind, and with nothing else, so they don't waste nothing and they don't pollute to. We must choice forms of renewable technologies not only wind energy or solar, but also geotermic, Hydropower, only cleans technologies, we must be fast to promote it if we want protect and preserve our world.