The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize on an alliance of four Tunisian civil society groups for their tireless efforts to foster democracy in the nation that gave birth to the Arab Spring.
The quartet of groups, including a worker's union with more than 1 million members, has worked to advance democracy in Tunisia, which still struggles with unrest but has made relative strides in reforms as other Arab Spring nations face greater violence, instability and the re-emergence of dictatorships.
The groups, the committee said, made a "decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011."
"More than anything, the prize is intended as encouragement for the Tunisian people who have laid the groundwork for a national fraternity which the committee hopes will be followed by other countries," the committee said.
