Nobel prizes to be presented in Oslo and Stockholm

Stockholm/Oslo (dpa) - The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize is due to be presented to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet at a ceremony in Oslo Thursday.The alliance of trade unions, employers organizations, human rights groups and lawyers is being honoured in the Norwegian capital for its efforts to uphold democracy and the peaceful political process in the North African nation.Later, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden is due to present the other Nobel prizes for literature, medicine, physics, chemistry and economics to the winners in Stockholm.The awards, each worth 8 million Swedish kronor (960,000 dollars), were bequeathed by Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and are presented each year on the anniversary of his death.The National Dialogue Quartet was founded in 2013 when Tunisia‘s transition to democracy was threatened with collapse.The decision to award it the prize proves that conflicts can be solved peacefully, Abdessattar Ben Moussa, one of the quartet members said on the eve of the ceremony in Oslo."Conflicts cannot be solved by weapons," said Moussa, head of the Tunisian Human Rights League. "Weapons bring destruction while dialogue and discussion settle any differences."In addition to Moussa‘s rights group, the quartet comprises the Tunisian General Labour Union; the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts; and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers.The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited the quartet for "its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy" and averting civil war in the North African country in 2013.Tunisia was the first in a string of countries in North Africa and the Middle East to rise up against longtime, autocratic rulers in 2010 and 2011. It is also widely seen as the sole success story of those popular revolts, dubbed the Arab Spring.The Nobel Prize for Literature will be presented to Ukraine-born Svetlana Alexievich and the medicine award to William C Campbell and Satoshi Omura for their work on a therapy against infections caused by ringworm parasites.Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B McDonald are to receive the physics award for their discoveries of neutrino oscillations while Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancor are being honoured with the chemistry prize for their studies of DNA repair.The economics award will be presented to Angus Deaton for his work exploring the interrelationship of consumption, poverty and welfare.