English for Advanced

(A) One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Whatever your views may be on Yasser Arafat, he is in fact a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Arafat scooped the gong in 1994 for his work on the Oslo accords, which created “opportunities for a new development toward fraternity in the Middle East.” While his critics condemned the award, calling Arafat an “unrepentant terrorist with a long legacy of promoting violence,” his supporters offered praise and compared the Palestinian leader to Nelson Mandela. As for his efforts toward fraternity in the Middle East: an uneasy relationship with Hamas, allegations of corruption and an aversion to compromise mean the ambitions of the Oslo accords were never fully realized. 

(B) Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17 in 2014, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Yousafzai became an advocate for girls’ education when she herself was still a child, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Yousafzai when she was traveling home from school. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. In 2013, she gave a speech to the United Nations and published her first book, I Am Malala.

(C) Nelson Mandela, one of the most recognizable human rights symbols of the twentieth century, is a man whose dedication to the liberties of his people inspires human rights advocates throughout the world.

Born in Transkei, South Africa, Mandela was the son of a tribal chief, and educated himself with a university degree and law degree. In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and actively worked to abolish the apartheid policies of the ruling National Party. On trial for his actions, Mandela declared, “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Sentenced to life imprisonment, Mandela became a powerful symbol of resistance for the rising anti-apartheid movement, repeatedly refusing to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom. Finally released in February 1990, he intensified the battle against oppression to attain the goals he and others had set out to accomplish almost four decades earlier.

In May 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president, a position he held until 1999. He presided over the transition from minority rule and apartheid, winning international respect for his advocacy of national and international reconciliation.

(D) The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and farms control negotiations.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.