The Tunisian national dialogue quartet, a coalition of civil society organisations, has won the 2015 Nobel peace prize “for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011”.

Kaci Kullmann Five, the chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel committee, said the quartet had formed an alternative peaceful political process in 2013 when the country was on the brink of civil war and subsequently guaranteed fundamental rights for the entire population, as Guardian reports.

The Arab spring began in Tunisia with protests that brought down the government of dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. However, the country fell into crisis in the following years.

The Nobel committee said the quartet had made a “decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia” at time of political assassinations and widespread social unrest.

The Nobel panel as an “encouragement to the Tunisian people” that showed the value of dialogue in a region riven by conflict.