John Hume

Nobel Peace Laureate 1998

John Hume (born in 1937) and David Trimble (1944), politicians from Northern Ireland, key architects of the 1998 good friday peace agreement. Hume and Trimble were awarded for their efforts to to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
John Hume was a long-standing leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the main political grouping of Northern Ireland Catholics. In the late 1960s Mr Hume was a key figure of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland.

In 1969 he was elected as an Independent to the Parliament of Northern Ireland. He sat in the Northern Ireland Assembly and later served as Minister of Commerce in the regional government. In 1983 John Hume was elected to the House of Commons. He was a Member of the European Parliament for five consecutive terms (1979-2004).

Hume led the SDLP during such important political events as the New Ireland Forum Talks 1983, the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation 1994 and All Party Talks which resulted in the Good Friday Agreement.

In 2012, he received the Order of Saint Gregory the Great from Pope Benedict XVI.