Sir, - The announcement that the Nobel Peace Prize is to be awarded to the relief and development organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres is welcome news indeed and I join with countless others around the world in congratulating them wholeheartedly. If ever an organisation deserved this peace award it is MSF.
MSF embody, in their everyday actions around the world, everything that a relief organisation should be. Their unconditional offer of a helping hand to the impoverished and persecuted has saved thousands of lives. Their championing of the rights of those living under the yoke of oppression has been the cause of much hope for millions who must have thought that they had been abandoned by the rest of the world.
This award brings the role of the NGOs in to the main arena and rank and file people around the world should realise how much of a debt of gratitude is owed to them for the work they do. They give of themselves even if this means putting their lives at risk and it behoves all governments to do more to help them in their work.
The NGOs are a proven vehicle for getting aid to the poor - infinitely better than government to government assistance because, sadly, it is a fact that many of the governments in developing countries are corrupt in the extreme. Money given by donor governments intended for humanitarian relief or development programmes has all too often been diverted to the private bank accounts of a ruling elite.
The Nobel Prize Committee has, by making this award to MSF, given a lead to the governments of the world to encourage the work of the NGOs. I would urge the Irish Government to think seriously about its policy of bilateral aid and to consider increasing substantially its assistance to the work of the operational NGOs. - Yours, etc.,
John O'Shea, GOAL, PO Box 19, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.