Nobel Peace Prize Concert

Laureates,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,

100 years for peace! Throughout a whole century, the Nobel Peace Prize has visualised the fight for mutual respect and peaceful coexistence among people. The concert in Oslo tonight communicates a message of peace across language and culture barriers. We are gathered here to honour not only this year’s laureates, but all those who through the years have, as Alfred Nobel expressed it: “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”.

“Be the change you want”, Mahatma Ghandi once said. The laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize have followed up these words of the great Indian statesman.

Respect for human life has been a driving force in their lives and deeds. Every one of the prize-winners from Dunant in 1901 to the United Nations and its Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2001, have all had visions of a better world. One of them, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

We live in an unstable world. There is violence; there is fear. But as long as there are people who have a dream of a better world, and the courage to fight for peace, there is hope for our common future.

Thank you.