Two peace prizes in 2 months for wise king of Jordan

The President of Kazakhstan announced Monday that King Abdullah II of Jordan will be the first recipient of a new award established by the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation to honour contributions to global security and nuclear disarmament.

Nursultan Nazarbayev announced that King Abdullah II will become the first recipient of the $1 million prize. Mr Nazarbayev established the prize to acknowledge contributions to global security, regional stability and nuclear non-proliferation by world leaders and organisations.

He hailed the king’s efforts to make Jordan an anchor of stability in the turbulent Middle East region. Abdullah is to receive the inaugural prize next month in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana. During the Soviet times, Kazakhstan’s territory was used for nuclear weapons tests. The prize marks the closure of the test facility in Semipalatinsk. In two months, this would be King Abdullah II’s second international prize. On October 8, he was awarded a prestigious prize in Germany for his peace efforts. At the award ceremony for the Westphalian Peace Prize in Muenster’s town hall, German President Joachim Gauck said Abdullah and his fellow Jordanians had “set standards for humanity” for their work in the region’s refugee crisis.

Jordan, with a population of about 6.5 million, is hosting about 635,000 refugees from neighboring war-torn Syria. A significant portion of Jordan’s state budget has gone into supporting the migrants. The German prize commemorates the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties concluded and announced in Muenster town hall in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years’ War and other conflicts.