Argentina’s House of Representatives has passed a resolution to nominate
Pope Francis for the Nobel Peace Prize for his call to end the violence
in Syria.
The resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority and now goes to the Senate for ratification.
Representative
Oscar Martinez, who sponsored the resolution, described Pope Francis as
“a man who throughout this year has been decisive in maintaining
international peace through his clear position regarding the conflict in
Syria.”
Since his election to the papacy, Pope Francis has
made repeated calls for peace in Syria. He sent a letter to Russian
President Vladimir Putin during the G20 Summit in which he called on the
international community to work for an end to the violence in Syria and
to reject any military intervention.
The Syrian conflict has
now dragged on for more than 2.5 years, since demonstrations sprang up
nationwide on March 15, 2011 protesting the rule of Bashar al-Assad,
Syria's president and leader of the country's Ba'ath Party.
In
April of that year, the Syrian army began to deploy to put down the
uprisings, firing on protesters. Since then, the violence has morphed
into a civil war which has claimed the lives of more than 115,000
people.
There are at least 2.2 million Syrian refugees in nearby countries, most of them in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.
An additional 6.5 million Syrian people are believed to have been internally displaced by the war.