The Nobel Peace Prize may not guarantee success for the causes of those who win it, but it opens doors, shines a spotlight and can even prove the moral equivalent of a bullet-proof jacket. ''I had been trying to get to the White House but the White House was not interested in me. As soon as the announcement was made I got an invitation from the White House,'' South African anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu, the 1984 winner, said. ''The Nobel prize was like a life insurance for me,'' said former polish president and 1983 winner Lech Walesa, another of 30 peace prize winners in Oslo on Friday, the second day of a three-day symposium on the 100th anniversary of the first award.
The 1992 laureate Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan campaigner for Indian human rights, noted the same benefit. ''Perhaps the Nobel prize saved my life,'' Menchu said.
Since the world's attention was on Guatemala after the peace prize, she said that she and her people were safer. ''After '92, it was more difficult for the government to infringe on my human rights,'' she said.
Bureau Report