BOGOTA – Colombian singer-songwriter Juanes has won the 2009 National Peace Price, awarded for the first time in acknowledgment of his work on behalf of victims of his country’s armed conflict and for promoting understanding among nations, organizers said.

The singer-songwriter earned the honor for his work with the Mi Sangre Foundation, which he created, and also for his big Peace Without Borders concerts, of which he has given two, one on the Colombia-Venezuela border and the other in Cuba.

Juanes was picked for the award by the U.N. Development Program, the Fescol Foundation, Semana magazine, the dailies El Tiempo and El Colombiano, and the Caracol Radio and Caracol Television networks, creators of the peace prize.

“Juanes is the artist who appears to be the most committed to doing something about the problems arising from the armed conflict in Colombia and from the lack of understanding among governments and peoples,” the promoters of the project said.

The artist does it by visiting soldiers wounded in combat and in minefields, by calling for hostages to be freed and with his Peace Without Borders concerts, the organizers said.

A National Peace Prize was also awarded to the inhabitants of Union Peneya, a settlement in the strife-torn jungle province of Caqueta, which in January 2004 was evacuated by its close to 2,000 inhabitants, driven away by the war.

The residents of the village received the prize for having overcome this massive displacement two years later when they returned to their former home. EFE