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