DHAKA: The Grameen Bank-famed Mohammad Yunus of Bangladesh was named as winner of the Seoul Peace Prize on Wednesday.

The awards ceremony will be held in Seoul on October 19.

The biennial prize of 200,000 dollars honours peace efforts by politicians, academics, activists and international organisations.

“His tireless endeavour to root out poverty and create a new model of giving credit to the poor will bear fruit in terms of greater peace in the world,” the Seoul Prize Cultural Foundation said in its citation.

It said Yunus, described as ‘banker to the poor’, began fighting poverty during a famine in Bangladesh in 1974. He set up a small bank, Grameen Bank, to give them access to credit, the citation added.

The Seoul Peace Prize, established in 1990, commemorates the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which drew 160 countries and were seen as breaking the ideological wall between East and West.

Mr Yunus is the eighth winner of the prize. Other recipients include UN secretary general Kofi Annan, the Czech Republic’s former president Vaclav Havel and international relief organisations such as Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam.