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Colombia awoke this morning to the news that President Juan Manuel Santos has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize<\/strong> for his work to end Colombia’s 52 year civil war with FARC guerrillas. The president’s hopes for the prize seemed to have been crushed by his\u00a0country’s marginal decision to vote ‘No’ to the peace accords he had presented, and signed in a lavish Cartagena ceremony just last week, and\u00a0the Nobel committee’s decision to reward him anyway has been met with a certain degree of shock in Colombia<\/strong>. However, many proponents of peace have taken the award as a\u00a0positive sign, giving the President and the Colombian people further impetus to continue working to salvage the peace agreement<\/strong> which, just last Sunday, seemed to have been destroyed by the 50.2% ‘No’ vote.<\/p>\n According to the President he was awoken before dawn by his son Martin Santos, who informed him of the committee’s decision to recognize his work in securing a peace deal with the FARC. He dedicated the award to all the Colombian people, in particular the victims of the 52-year conflict<\/strong>, who overwhelmingly supported the ‘Yes’ vote in the recently rejected plebiscite.\u00a0\u201cI am infinitely grateful for this honorable distinction with all my heart. I accept it not on my behalf but on behalf of all Colombians, especially the millions of victims of this conflict which we have suffered for more than 50 years<\/strong>.\u00a0It is for the victims and so that there not be a single new victim, not a single new casualty that we must reconcile and unite to culminate this process and begin to construct a stable and durable peace<\/strong>,\u201d said President Santos in a public statement this morning.<\/p>\n