Local leaders have been given a week to try to sort out conflicts among those planning a Nobel peace summit in Atlanta, or the international organization that awarded the city the event will move the gathering elsewhere.
In a press release issued this week by the Permanent Secretariat of The World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, a Rome-based organization that spearheads annual gatherings of Nobel Peace Prize winners, the organization said its members met in recent days and are giving Atlanta a final opportunity to reach a resolution.
It did not outline the problems or describe the issues it hopes Atlanta will address, but threatened to yank the summit if its organizers fail to reach a solution that is “satisfactory” to Nobel laureates and Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration within a week.
The summit — the first of its kind in the city — attracted many members of Atlanta's elite when it was announced two years ago. But in recent months, Reed and a handful of others decided not to participate in the summit due to conflict with the event's chief organizer, Mohammad Bhuiyan, the CEO of Yunus Creative Lab.
Bhuiyan and his wife, Shamima Amin, founded YCL with Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, who has also resigned from the effort because of the discord. The secretariat's organization, which is not affiliated with the Nobel Foundation nor the Norwegian Nobel Institute, awarded the 2015 summit to YCL.
Bhuiyan, a former college administrator, has said the criticisms against him are unfair. He said Reed withdrew because Bhuiyan refused to award business to a friend of the mayor’s — a charge Reed said is false. Bhuiyan, who is Bangladeshi, also believes that some of the complaints raised by others are racially motivated and have nothing to do with his competency.
The remaining members of the Yunus Creative Lab board, including former gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter and Laura Turner Seydel, have been working to get the summit back on track.
Bob Hope, a volunteer spokesman for the Atlanta summit, said a group of stakeholders met Monday to iron out a solution, such as partnering with a new organization to help manage the event. Hope described the talks as “hopeful” and said he believes a resolution is in reach.
“(Supporters) feel like Atlanta is the place where the summit should be held, and if we walk away from it and don’t do it this time, it would be difficult to come back and do it in the future,” he said.
A request for comment from Reed’s office was not returned by deadline on Monday.
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