Former President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, which appeared to cap his decades-long commitment to worldwide humanitarian efforts after leaving the White House.
Instead, he continued to labor for years afterward, leaving a legacy that has received additional attention in the wake of his death at the age of 100.
After spending one term as president and losing his reelection campaign to Ronald Reagan, Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, established an eponymous organization in Georgia dedicated to conflict resolution and the advancement of human rights, public health, and democracy worldwide.
The Carter Center, the primary vehicle for the Carters’ work, was established in 1982, one year after he left the White House.
Jimmy Carter’s advocacy for peaceful answers to worldwide crises contributed to his position as a global statesman, which he emphasized when he received the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2002.
“War can sometimes be a necessary evil. But, regardless of how necessary, it is always wicked and never beneficial. “We will not learn how to live in peace by murdering each other’s children,” he remarked then.
The center’s website states that it is guided by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s ideals, which include “a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering” while “seek[ing] to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health.”
Since its inception, the center has launched projects around the world, focused on democracy promotion, public involvement with government, and global health.
Among other successes, the institute touts its work monitoring 113 elections in 39 nations. Specifically, the center recently monitored elections in Myanmar, Bolivia, the Ivory Coast, Guyana, Tunisia, and Nepal, and it is presently working on projects to improve women’s access to information in Liberia, Bangladesh, and Guatemala.
Elsewhere, the center is “supporting a human rights-based approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” trying to execute a 2015 peace agreement in Mali and alleviate Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe, the type of work that earned Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
“What I derive from this is a commitment to peace, to the honoring of international law,” Jimmy Carter remarked on October 11, 2002, after being named the prize’s recipient that year.
Building on Jimmy Carter’s success in the White House in establishing a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, the center eventually became a diplomatic broker outside of the government’s official channels, with the former president personally meeting world leaders in places such as North Korea, where he helped establish a nuclear agreement between Washington and Pyongyang in 1994.
Aside from promoting democracy and resolving conflicts, the center has long been involved in a number of global health initiatives, including the fight against Guinea worm, river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis and malaria.
“We believe access to health care is a human right, especially for poor people suffering from diseases who are often forgotten, ignored, and without hope,” Jimmy Carter stated in a quotation on the center’s website. “Just to know that someone cares about them not only can ease their physical pain but also remove an element of alienation and anger that can lead to hatred and violence.”
These efforts contributed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s unanimous decision in 2002 to give the former president the peace prize.
At the time, he decried the growing global wealth gap, attributing it to many of the world’s most pressing issues.
“Among all the options, I concluded that the most significant and universal issue is the widening gap between the world’s richest and poorest individuals. Citizens in the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest, and the gap is growing year after year, not only between nations but also within them,” he stated in 2002.
“The results of this disparity are root causes of most of the world’s unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict, and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.”
Aside from his center, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter worked with Habitat for Humanity for decades, frequently volunteering to help construct homes for families in need.
“Habitat provides a simple but powerful avenue for people of different backgrounds to come together to achieve those most meaningful things in life,” as Jimmy Carter once stated. “A decent home, certainly, but also a meaningful connection to our fellow humans. A relationship formed via the construction of walls and the removal of barriers.”
