Mohamed ElBaradei — Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Oslo, 10 December 2005

A recent United Nations High-Level Panel identified five categories of threats that we face: 1. Poverty, Infectious Disease, and Environmental Degradation; 2. Armed Conflict – both within and among states; 3. Organized Crime; 4. Terrorism; and 5. Weapons of Mass Destruction. These are all ‘threats without borders’ – where traditional notions of national security have become obsolete. We cannot respond to these threats by building more walls, developing bigger weapons, or dispatching more troops.

[… …] We may have torn down the walls between East and West, but we have yet to build the bridges between North and South – the rich and the poor. […] Of the 13 million deaths due to armed conflict in the last ten years, 9 million occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where the poorest of the poor live.

[… …] I have no doubt that, if we hope to escape self-destruction, then nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience, and no role in our security. To that end, we must ensure – absolutely – that no more countries acquire these deadly weapons. We must see to it that nuclear-weapon states take concrete steps towards nuclear disarmament. And we must put in place a security system that does not rely on nuclear deterrence.

[… …] I am an Egyptian Muslim, educated in Cairo and New York, and now living in Vienna. […] There is no religion that was founded on intolerance – and no religion that does not value the sanctity of human life. […] Islam declares that killing one person unjustly is the same as killing all of humanity.