Santos will receive the prize on Saturday afternoon at Oslo's City Hall at a ceremony attended by the royal family, members of the Norwegian government, representatives of victims of the conflict, and two high-profile former FARC hostages, Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas. The prize went to him alone and not the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which is still designated as a terrorist group by many countries including the U.S.

“The FARC is not here is because I didn’t want to create a problem with the Norwegian government,” he said, adding a Spanish lawyer who served as a chief negotiator for the rebels would represent the rebels at the ceremony. The entire FARC leadership — some 50 rebels in all — is unable to safely travel outside of Colombia because they face international arrest orders by the U.S. on drug-trafficking charges

Santos said legal procedures are underway in Colombia “in order for them to be completely free to go around the world.” He also said Colombia will ask other countries to remove the group from terror lists following the peace deal, which was formally ratified by lawmakers last week after an earlier version was rejected in a referendum. Berit Reiss-Andersen, a member of the five-member award committee, said in a presentation speech that Santos had been "a driving force" and that the peace process needed "all the international support it could get" after the referendum. The other Nobel Prizes were presented at a separate ceremony in Stockholm to the laureates in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics.
Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos receives his award in Oslo, Norway.