Bangladeshi Nobel peace prize laureate Muhammad Yunus has called for a peaceful solution in Catalonia over the independence bid after a meeting with president Quim Torra at the government headquarters. Yunus stressed that “the whole world is aware” of the political situation in the country, and urged all parts to avoid going in a direction where the “peace is threatened.”

In 2006, he received the Nobel prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance—loans which are given to entrepreneurs who are too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. The Norwegian Nobel Committee stressed that “lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty.”