Justus For All

International Herald Tribune

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, for pioneering work in pulling millions of women out of poverty through small loans.The prize lends heft to an idea already gaining ground in antipoverty circles: that capitalist methods can be more effective in curbing poverty than traditional grant-giving by governments and bodies like the World Bank.

The award “is fitting acknowledgment that the ways of the market are not necessarily evil, that markets can be harnessed as forces of good if done properly,” said Nachiket Mor, executive director of Icici Bank, India’s largest private-sector lender. Mor manages about $550 million in microcredit, the small loans modeled on the Grameen model.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Yunus and Grameen for their “efforts to create economic and social development from below.

“Loans to poor people without any financial security had appeared to be an impossible idea,” the citation read. “From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed microcredit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty.”

This is a  Nobel Peace prize that I can fully support.  Yunus deserves this award and I am glad that he got it.