Sean MacBride, Nobel and Lenin Laureate, Dies

Nobel Peace Prize winner Sean MacBride has died at his Dublin home at 83, his family announced today.

MacBride won the peace prize in 1974 for his human rights work and later was awarded the Soviet equivalent, the Lenin Prize, in 1977.

Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey said in statement that MacBride was “a statesman of international status who was listened to with respect all around the world.”

MacBride, honored by both East and West as a champion of peace, began his career as a man of violence, taking up a gun in his native Ireland to fight for the Irish Republican Army in the battle for independence from Britain.

By 1935, he had risen to become chief of staff of the IRA, which still fights Britain for the reunification of Ireland. He later became a prominent jurist, Irish foreign minister and a leading campaigner for human rights.

Service With U.N.

From 1974-1976, he served as U.N. high commissioner for Namibia (South-West Africa), which South Africa rules in defiance of the United Nations.

He then became chairman of an international commission on communications that was charged by UNESCO with examining the objectivity and independence of the mass media.

He attacked what he saw as the excessive influence and power of the rich world’s media on international affairs.

MacBride also went on to help found Amnesty International, the human rights organization that campaigns on behalf of prisoners of conscience around the world.”