Nobel Peace Prize won by Tunisian democracy group

The National Dialogue Quartet in Tunisia has won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The jury cited the group for “its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011”.

The Nobel committee said the coalition of civil society organisations formed an alternative political process in 2013 when the country was on the brink of civil war.

The prize is a huge victory for Tunisia, whose young and still shaky democracy suffered two extremist attacks this year that killed 60 people and devastated the tourism industry.

The National Dialogue Quartet is made up of the Tunisian General Labour Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League, and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers.

“The Nobel Peace Prize for 2015 is awarded to this Quartet, not to the four individual organisations as such,” the committee said.

There were 273 candidates nominated for the 2015 peace prize, five fewer than last year.

Angela Merkel, Pope Francis and a line-up of anti-nuclear campaigners had been among favourites to win the peace prize on the eve of Friday's announcement.

The award capped a week of Nobel Prize announcements, with the winners of the medicine, physics, chemistry and literature awards already presented in Stockholm.

The economics award — not an original Nobel Prize but created in 1968 — will be announced on Monday.

Agencies