From the UN News Center: The work of this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the microfinance banker and economist Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, offers rich and poor people one of the most simple and yet powerful ideas for development, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown said today.

Speaking at UN Headquarters in New York during a tribute to Professor Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank, Mr. Malloch Brown hailed the Bangladeshi as a banker, advocate, activist and champion for the poor. "You have done wonderful things for development and by doing that you have done wonderful things for peace," he told the laureate.

The Grameen Bank is a pioneer of the microfinance movement, which offers loans to some of the world's poorest people, particularly women, who would otherwise have no access to such funds. The bank has become renowned for extraordinarily high rates of repayment from its customers.

Mr. Malloch Brown said microfinance has become synonymous with Professor Yunus and "therefore it's absolutely right that you have been singled out" for the Nobel Prize.

More on Yunus recently at the Washington Post.

In other microfinance news, some big media is getting keen on the subject ...

Business Week says it was 'truly a year for microfinance' ...

Reuters looks at how microloans we philanthropy and banking ...

The New York Times profiles Acumen Fund ...

Canada pledges $40 mil for microfinance ...