NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 2021

• Recently, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.
• In 2020, the award was given to the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations (UN) agency.
• Other 2021 Nobel Prizes for Literature, Chemistry, Physics and Medicine have already been announced.

Important points:

• She is an investigative journalist, in 2012 she co-founded Rappler, a digital media platform for investigative journalism, which she continues to head.
• Rappler has focused critical attention on President Rodrigo Duterte’s regime’s controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign.
• In the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, the Philippines ranked 138 of 180 nations (India was ranked lower, at 142).
• She has also authored Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center, and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism.
• Muratov has for decades defended freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions”.
• Russia has ranked 150 in the 2021 World Freedom Index.
• He along with around 50 colleagues started Novaya Gazeta (Newspaper) in 1993, as one of its founders. He has served as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief since 1995.
• Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based non-profit, had felicitated Muratov as one of its International Press Freedom awardees in 2007.
• Six of Muratov’s colleagues have been killed since the newspaper started, which has often faced harassment, threats, violence and murder from its opponents.
• Despite the killings and threats, editor-in-chief Muratov has refused to abandon the newspaper’s independent policy.

Significance:

• Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda.
• Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT