Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos receives the Nobel Peace Prize during joint ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm on Decmebr 10th, 2016. Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen/TT

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Literature Prize winner Bob Dylan is, as expected, not present at the ceremony in Stockholm.

The Colombian president was awarded 2016's prize for reaching a peace agreement with the FARC guerilla movement, signalling the end of a lasting over 50 years.

After an initial agreement was rejected in a national referendum in October, Santos was able to renegotiate a new peace deal with the rebels, which was signed by both sides on November 24th.

Santos used his acceptance speech in Oslo to encourage the rest of the world to approach its challenges with optimism, citing the conflict in Syria as an area he hopes will find inspiration from the Colombian peace.

"The sun of peace is finally shining in the Colombian skies. May it light up the whole world," said Santos during his speech at Oslo City Hall, according to Dagens Nyheter's report.

Santos described the Colombian peace as a ray of hope in a world plagued by conflicts such as those in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.

"Allow me to tell you, from my own experience, that it is much harder to make peace than to wage war," said Santos.

Santos made a nod towards his fellow Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan - who has shied away from publicity around the award and is not present in Stockholm, where the award for Literature is presented - by quoting a line from 'Blowin' in The Wind'.

In Dylan's place, Patty Smith, backed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and arranged by Swedish conductor Hans Ek will sing Dylan's 1963 hit 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall' during the traditional banquet at Stockholm's Konserthuset. </s> Efforts by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to end five decades of war in his country were recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The award came despite voters’ shock rejection of the terms of a historic deal he reached last month with FARC chief Rodrigo Londono, alias Timoleon “Timochenko” Jimenez, after nearly four years of talks.

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end,” said committee chairwoman Kaci Kullmann Five.

Santos takes home the eight million Swedish kronor (around $924,000 or 831,000 euros) prize sum.

The peace prize is the only one of the six awards announced in Norway. Swedish inventor and scholar Alfred Nobel, who created the prizes in his 1895 testament, wanted to include Norway in his initiative, since Norway and Sweden were joined in a union at the time. </s> Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has said he is deeply honoured to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end a five-decade civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people. </s> The Nobel Peace Prize of 2016 is set to be awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who called it "a gift from heaven" for his country's peace process with FARC rebels.

The prize ceremony will be held on Saturday evening in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

Al Jazeera will be talking exclusively to the Colombian president at 17:00GMT. Watch the interview live here.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award the prize to Santos for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to an end.

The war has cost the lives of at least 220,000 Colombians and displaced close to six million people.

Santos was named peace prize laureate on October 7, just four days after the people in Colombia in a referendum narrowly rejected a peace deal his government had reached with the FARC rebels.

Despite the outcome, Santos concluded "all wanted peace", he told a news conference at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

"Four days later the Nobel Prize award was announced, and it came like a gift from heaven because it gave us a tremendous push," he said on Friday.

"People in Colombia interpreted it as a mandate from the international community to persevere."

The recipients of the Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry and economics are also to receive their awards. The ceremonies for these prizes will be held in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. </s> Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signs a protocol book in the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo on Friday. At left is Colombian First Lady Maria Clemencia Rodriguez.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Friday said the Nobel Peace Prize was a “gift from heaven” and gave a “tremendous push” to reach a new agreement with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels.

Speaking at a news conference in Oslo on the eve of the prize ceremony, Mr. Santos said the prestigious award “came like a gift from heaven because it gave us a tremendous push” to achieve a new peace deal with FARC after Colombian voters narrowly rejected an initial agreement in an October referendum.

“People in Colombia interpreted it as a mandate from the international community to persevere, to continue striving to achieve a peace agreement,” Mr. Santos said.

The accord, signed with pens made from bullet casings on September 26 after nearly four years of talks, was supposed to be ratified in an October 2 referendum. But voters rejected it, leaving Colombia teetering between war and peace.

Five days later, Santos was announced as the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

His government and the Marxist FARC rebels then signed a renegotiated peace accord on November 24.

The country’s five-decade conflict has killed more than 260,000 people, left 45,000 missing and forced nearly seven million to flee their homes. Mr. Santos brought no members of the leftist FARC rebel group to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony because he didn’t want to “create a problem” for the Norwegian government. “They will be here in heart and spirit,” Mr. Santos said of the rebel group, with whom he recently reached a peace agreement.

Mr. Santos will collect the Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday. The prize went to him alone and not the FARC, which is still designated as a terrorist group by many countries.

The FARC leadership is unable to travel outside of Colombia because they face international arrest orders by the U.S. on drug-trafficking charges. Mr. Santos said procedures are underway in Colombia “in order for them to be completely free to go around the world.” </s> Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end five decades of war in his country. PHOTO | AFP

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a surprise choice after Colombians voted "No" to an agreement he signed with Marxist rebels to end 52 years of war.

President Santos has promised to revive the peace plan even though Colombians, in a referendum on Sunday, narrowly rejected the accord. Many voters believed it was too lenient on the FARC guerrillas.

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end," said committee leader Kaci Kullmann Five.

"The award should also be seen as a tribute to the Colombian people," she added when announcing the prize.

Voters did not say "No" to peace but to the agreement, she said.

The award pointedly excluded FARC guerrilla leader Rodrigo Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, who signed the deal with Santos.

Some Nobel watchers had taken Colombia off their lists of favourites after the referendum "No".

"The fact that a majority of the voters said "No" to the peace accord does not necessarily mean that the peace process is dead," the committee said.

"This makes it even more important that the parties, headed by President Santos and FARC guerrilla leader Rodrigo Londoño, continue to respect the ceasefire," the committee said.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 8 million Swedish crowns ($930,000), will be presented in Oslo on December 10. </s> OSLO, Norway (AP) — Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his efforts to end a five-decades-long civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people in the South American country.

The award came just days after Colombian voters narrowly rejected the peace deal that Santos helped bring about, and Nobel judges conspicuously left out his counterpart, Rodrigo Londono, the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), from the honor.

"The referendum was not a vote for or against peace," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, insisting the peace process wasn't dead. "What the 'No' side rejected was not the desire for peace, but a specific peace agreement."

Colombian voters rejected the deal Sunday by the narrowest of margins — less than a half percentage point — over concerns that the rebels, who were behind scores of atrocities, were getting a sweetheart deal. Under the terms of the accord, rebels who turn over their weapons and confess their crimes will be spared jail time and the FARC instead would be given 10 seats in congress through 2026.

There was no immediate reaction from Santos to the award, which was announced in the middle of the night in Colombia. But the Nobel media group on Twitter quoted him as saying: "I have received this award in their name: the Colombian people who have suffered so much with this war."

In Bogota, some 20 activists camped out in front of Colombia's congress to demand the peace deal not be scuttled shouted "Peace deal now!" and "Colombia wants peace!" at the news.

"This is a big help, but we're not leaving until there's peace," said Juliana Bohorquez, a 31-year-old artist.

Santos and Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, signed the peace deal last month after more than four years of negotiations in Cuba. Six days later, Colombians rejected it in the referendum.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it believes that Santos, despite the "No" vote, "has brought the bloody conflict significantly closer to a peaceful solution."

It said the award should also be seen "as a tribute to the Colombian people who, despite great hardships and abuses, have not given up hope of a just peace, and to all the parties who have contributed to the peace process."

Committee secretary Olav Njoelstad said there was "broad consensus" on picking Santos as this year's laureate — the first time the peace prize went to Latin America since 1992, when Guatemalan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchu won.

Yet awarding Santos alone was a departure from the Nobel committee's tradition of honoring both sides in a peace process, like it did in 1994 for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord and in 1998 for peace talks in Northern Ireland.

"I can't think of another time when they didn't give to both sides," said Nobel historian Asle Sveen, who isn't connected to the committee. "But the referendum made it difficult. The opposition who won the referendum would have been provoked. I suspect the committee took the FARC out at the last minute."

Santos, 65, is an unlikely peacemaker. The Harvard-educated scion of one of Colombia's wealthiest families, as defense minister a decade ago, he was responsible for some of the FARC's biggest military setbacks. Those included a 2008 cross-border raid into Ecuador that took out a top rebel commander and the stealth rescue of three Americans held captive by the rebels for more than five years.

Santos and Londono met only twice during the entire peace process: last year when they put the final touches on the most-controversial section of the accord — how guerrillas would be punished for war crimes — and last month to sign the accord before an audience of world leaders and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The Colombian vote Sunday was also seen as a referendum of sorts on Santos, who has staked his presidency on securing peace but in the process, critics say, neglected the economy and other pressing issues. Santos' approval rating in July was near the lowest it has been since he took office in 2010.

Prize committee chair Kaci Kullmann Five said Santos has made it clear that he will continue to work for peace in Colombia.

"The Committee hopes that the peace prize will give him strength to succeed in this demanding task," she said.

Norway, along with Cuba, has been a sponsor of the Colombian peace process since the outset. The public phase of talks began in Oslo in 2012 and the Norwegian government's bald-headed, mustached representative to the talks, Dag Nylander, has become a minor celebrity among Colombians, who have followed every announcement from Havana on TV. "It takes great courage pursuing peace and securing a final outcome that can end the conflict," he wrote. A record 376 candidates were nominated for this year's award, which carries a prize of 8 million Swedish kronor (about $930,000). Last year's peace prize went to Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet for its efforts to build a pluralistic democracy. The 2016 Nobel Prize announcements continue with the economics prize on Monday and the literature award on Thursday. All awards will be handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896. Ritter reported from Stockholm. Joshua Goodman in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report. </s> BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his efforts to end Latin America's longest-running armed conflict, an honor that came just five days after voters dealt him a blow by rejecting a peace deal with leftist rebels.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Santos for his "resolute" attempts to stop a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 Colombians and displaced millions since the 1960s. But in a departure from its tradition of honoring both sides of a peace process, the five-member committee left out Santos' counterpart, rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, from the honor.

Santos, 65, dedicated the prize to his fellow Colombians, especially victims of the bloody conflict, and said it redoubles his commitment to ending hostilities, something he said he would work toward for the rest of his life.

"I invite everyone to bring together our strength, our minds and our hearts in this great national endeavor so that we can win the most important prize of all: peace in Colombia," Santos said alongside his wife in his first public appearance since winning the Nobel.

Santos and Londono — leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym FARC — signed a peace deal last month to end the conflict after more than four years of negotiations in Cuba.

But Sunday, voters rejected the deal by the narrowest of margins — less than half a percentage point — over concerns that the rebels, who are widely loathed by Colombians for committing scores of atrocities, were getting a sweetheart deal.

Under the accord, rebels who turn over their weapons and confess their crimes would be spared jail, and the group would be reserved seats in congress to help smooth its transition to a political movement.

"The referendum was not a vote for or against peace," the Nobel committee said Friday, insisting the peace process wasn't dead. "What the 'No' side rejected was not the desire for peace, but a specific peace agreement." </s> The award should also be seen as a tribute to the Colombian people, said the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 has been awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his efforts to end his country's 50-year civil war.

Mr Santos negotiated a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group but the peace deal was rejected by a narrow majority of Colombians when it was put to referendum.

“The award should also be seen as a tribute to the Colombian people who, despite great hardships and abuses, have not given up hope of a just peace, and to all the parties who have contributed to the peace process,” said a statement by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

”Thank you from the bottom of my heart and in the name of all the Colombians, especially the victims.” President Santos said on being awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize. He emphasised that he received the award on behalf of his fellow citizens.

One of the five prizes instituted by Alfred Nobel, the Peace Prize is awarded to those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Last year’s Peace Prize went to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for “for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.”
Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos receives his award in Oslo, Norway.