Nobel Peace Prize

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Conflict and Peace

The Nobel Peace Prize ( Swedish and Norwegian: Nobels fredspris) is the name of one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

The Peace Prize is awarded annually in Oslo, the capital of Norway (Alfred Nobel's will stated that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded in that city). The actual prize always is presented on the 10th of December, the anniversary of the death of Nobel. The Norwegian king is in attendance. "In Oslo, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presents the Nobel Peace Prize in the presence of the King of Norway. Under the eyes of a watching world, the Nobel Laureate receives three things: a diploma, a medal and a document confirming the prize amount." The Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony is held at the Oslo City Hall, followed the next day by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, which is broadcast to more than 450 million households in over 150 countries around the world. The concert has received worldwide fame and the participation of top celebrity hosts and performers. The selection of Nobel Peace Prize winners sometimes causes controversy, as the list of winners includes people who formerly used violent methods of problem-solving, but then later made exceptional concessions to non-violence in the attempt to achieve peace. This is the only Nobel Prize not given out in Stockholm, Sweden.

Appointment process

Nobel died in 1896 and did not leave an explanation for choosing peace as a prize category. The categories for chemistry and physics were obvious choices as he was a trained chemical engineer. The reason behind the peace prize is less clear. Some have said it was Nobel's way to compensate for developing destructive forces (Nobel's inventions included dynamite and ballistite). However, none of his explosives, except for ballistite, were used in any war during his lifetime, although the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an Irish nationalist organisation, did carry out dynamite attacks in the 1880s.

The Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway.

The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the Laureate for the Peace Prize. The Committee chairman, currently Dr. Ole Danbolt Mjøs, awards the Prize itself. At the time of Alfred Nobel's death Sweden and Norway were in a personal union in which the Swedish government was solely responsible for foreign policy, and the Norwegian Parliament was responsible only for Norwegian domestic policy. Alfred Nobel never explained why he wanted a Norwegian rather than Swedish body to award the Peace Prize. As a consequence, many people have speculated about Nobel's intentions. For instance, Nobel may have wanted to prevent the manipulation of the selection process by foreign powers, and as Norway did not have any foreign policy, the Norwegian government could not be influenced.

Nominations

Nominations for the Prize may be made by a broad array of qualified individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies and congresses, university professors (in certain disciplines), international judges, and special advisors to the Prize Committee. In some years as many as 199 nominations have been received. The Committee keeps the nominations secret and asks that nominators do the same. Over time many individuals have become known as "Nobel Peace Prize Nominees", but this designation has no official standing. Nominations from 1901 to 1955, however, have been released in a database. When the past nominations were released it was discovered that Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939 by Erik Brandt, a member of the Swedish Parliament. Brandt retracted the nomination after a few days. Other infamous nominees included Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. However, since nomination requires only support from one qualified person (e.g., a history professor), these unusual nominations do not represent the opinions of the Nobel committee itself.

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which recognize completed scientific or literary accomplishment, the Nobel Peace Prize may be awarded to persons or organizations that are in the process of resolving a conflict or creating peace. As some such processes have failed to create lasting peace, some Peace Prizes appear questionable in hindsight. For example, the awards given to Theodore Roosevelt, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, Lê Ðức Thọ and Henry Kissinger were particularly controversial and criticized; the Kissinger-Thọ award prompted two dissenting Committee members to resign.

In 2005, the Nobel Peace Centre opened. It serves to present the Laureates, their work for peace, and the ongoing problems of war and conflict around the world.

Controversy

The Nobel Peace Prize has sparked controversy throughout its history. The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Peace Prize Committee, but pacifist critics argue that the same Parliament has pursued partisan military aims by ratifying membership in NATO in 1949, by hosting NATO troops, and by leasing ports and territorial waters to US ballistic missile submarines in 1983. However, the Parliament has no say in the award issue. A member of the Committee cannot at the same time be a member of the Parliament, and the Committee includes former members from all major parties, including those parties that oppose NATO membership.

A particular claimed weakness of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding process is the swiftness of recognition. The scientific and literary Nobel Prizes are usually issued in retrospect, often two or three decades after the awarded achievement, thus representing a time-proven confirmation and balance of approval by the established academic community, seldom contradicted by newer developments. In contrast, the Nobel Peace Prize at times takes the form of summary judgment, being issued in the same year as or the year immediately following the political act. Some commentators have suggested that to award a peace prize on the basis of unquantifiable contemporary opinion is unjust or possibly erroneous, especially as many of the judges cannot themselves be said to be impartial observers. In pro-democracy struggles, it may be said that the 'real' peace-makers may not be recognized for their long-term or subtle approaches. However, others have pointed to the uniqueness of the Peace Prize i that its high profile can often focus world attention on particular problems and possibly aid in the peace-efforts themselves.

The 14th Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu, 2004

On closer inspection, the peace-laureates often have a lifetime's history of working at and promoting humanitarian issues, as in the examples of German medic Albert Schweitzer (1952 laureate), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an African-American civil rights activist (1964 laureate); Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic missionary nun (1979 laureate); and Aung San Suu Kyi, a Buddhist nonviolent pro-democracy activist (1991 laureate). Still others are selected for tireless efforts, as in the examples of Jimmy Carter and Mohamed ElBaradei. Others, even today, are quite controversial, due to the recipient's political activity, as in the case of Henry Kissinger (1973 laureate), Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat (1978 laureates), or Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat (1994 laureates).

A widely discussed criticism of the peace-prize are the notable omissions, namely the failure to award individuals with widely recognized contributions to peace. The list includes Mahatma Gandhi, Corazon Aquino, Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, Steve Biko, Raphael Lemkin, Herbert Hoover, Abdul Sattar Edhi. César Chávez, Jose Figueres Ferrer, and Oscar Romero. In particular, the omission of the Indian leader Gandhi has been widely discussed, including public statements by the various members of Nobel Committee. It has been acknowledged by the committee that Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948. The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee. In 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, the Nobel Committee declined to award a prize on the ground that "there was no suitable living candidate" that year. Later, when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi." In most cases, the omissions resulted in part from the provision in Alfred Nobel's will that only living people could receive the prize.

Research by anthropologist David Stoll into Rigoberta Menchú, the 1992 recipient, revealed some fabrications in her biography, "Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia" (My Name is Rigoberta Menchú and this is how my Conscience was Born), translated into English as " I, Rigoberta Menchú". Menchú later admitted changing some details about her background. After the initial controversy, the Nobel Committee dismissed calls to revoke her Nobel prize because of the reported falsifications. Professor Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the Committee, said her prize "was not based exclusively or primarily on the autobiography".. According to the Nobel Committee, "Stoll approves of her Nobel prize and has no question about the picture of army atrocities which she presents. He says that her purpose in telling her story the way she did 'enabled her to focus international condemnation on an institution that deserved it, the Guatemalan army."

List of Laureates

Year	Laureate(s)	Nationality	Work for which cited (Citations)
1901*	Jean Henri Dunant	Switzerland	Founder, Red Cross; Geneva Convention, Human rights.
1901*	Frédéric Passy	France	Founder and President, Société d'arbitrage entre les Nations.
1902	Élie Ducommun Charles Albert Gobat	Switzerland	Honorary secretaries, Permanent International Peace Bureau in Berne.
1903	William Randal Cremer	United Kingdom	Secretary, International Arbitration League.
1904	Institut de Droit International	Belgium
1905	Bertha Sophie Felicitas Baronin von Suttner	Austria-Hungary/ Czech	Honorary President, Permanent International Peace Bureau.
1906	Theodore Roosevelt	United States	President of the United States; peace treaty collaborations (brokering the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War)
1907*	Ernesto Teodoro Moneta	Italy	President, Lombard League of Peace
1907*	Louis Renault	France	Professor of International Law
1908*	Klas Pontus Arnoldson	Sweden	Founder, Swedish Peace and Arbitration Association
1908*	Fredrik Bajer	Denmark	Honorary President, Permanent International Peace Bureau
1909*	Auguste Marie François Beernaert	Belgium	Member of the Cour Internationale d'Arbitrage.
1909*	Paul-Henri-Benjamin d'Estournelles de Constant	France	founder and president of the French parliamentary group for international arbitration. Founder of the Comité de défense des intérets nationaux et de conciliation internationale
1910	International Peace Bureau	Switzerland	Berne
1911*	Tobias Michael Carel Asser	Netherlands	initiator of the International Conferences of Private Law in The Hague.
1911*	Alfred Hermann Fried	Austria-Hungary	founder of Die Waffen Nieder.
1912	Elihu Root	United States	for initiating various arbitration agreements.
1913	Henri La Fontaine	Belgium	President of the Permanent International Peace Bureau.
1914	[no award]
1915	[no award]
1916	[no award]
1917	International Committee of the Red Cross	Switzerland
1918	[no award]
1919	Woodrow Wilson	United States	President of the United States, as foremost promoter of the League of Nations.
1920	Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois	France	president of the Council of the League of Nations.
1921*	Hjalmar Branting	Sweden	prime minister, Swedish delegate to the Council of the League of Nations.
1921*	Christian Lous Lange	Norway	secretary-general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union
1922	Fridtjof Nansen	Norway	Norwegian delegate to the League of Nations, originator of the Nansen passports for refugees.
1923	[no award]
1924	[no award]
1925*	Austen Chamberlain	United Kingdom	for the Locarno Treaties.
1925*	Charles Gates Dawes	United States	chairman of the Allied Reparations Commission and originator of the Dawes Plan.
1926*	Aristide Briand	France	for the Locarno Treaties.
1926*	Gustav Stresemann	Germany	for the Locarno Treaties.
1927*	Ferdinand Buisson	France	founder and president of the League for Human Rights.
1927*	Ludwig Quidde	Germany	delegate to numerous peace conferences.
1928	[no award]
1929	Frank B. Kellogg	United States	for the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
1930	Nathan Söderblom	Sweden	leader of the ecumenical movement.
1931*	Jane Addams	United States	international president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
1931*	Nicholas Murray Butler	United States	for promoting the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
1932	[no award]
1933	Sir Norman Angell	United Kingdom	writer, member of the Executive Committee of the League of Nations and the National Peace Council.
1934	Arthur Henderson	United Kingdom	chairman of the League of Nations Disarmament Conference
1935	Carl von Ossietzky	Germany	pacifist journalist.
1936	Carlos Saavedra Lamas	Argentina	president of the League of Nations and mediator in the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia.
1937	Robert Cecil	United Kingdom	founder and president of the International Peace Campaign
1938	Nansen International Office For Refugees	Switzerland
1939	[no award]
1940	[no award]
1941	[no award]
1942	[no award]
1943	[no award]
1944	International Committee of the Red Cross	Switzerland	awarded retroactively in 1945
1945	Cordell Hull	United States	for co-initiating the United Nations.
1946*	Emily Greene Balch	United States	honorary international president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
1946*	John R. Mott	United States	chairman of the International Missionary Council and president of the World Alliance of Young Men's Christian Associations
1947	Friends Service Council American Friends Service Committee	United Kingdom United States	on behalf of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers.
1948	[no award]		May have been awarded to Mohandas Gandhi had he not been assassinated.
1949	Lord Boyd Orr	United Kingdom	director general Food and Agricultural Organization, president National Peace Council, president World Union of Peace Organizations.
1950	Ralph Bunche	United States	for mediating in Palestine (1948)
1951	Léon Jouhaux	France	president of the International Committee of the European Council, vice president of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, vice president of the World Federation of Trade Unions, member of the ILO Council, delegate to the UN.
1952	Albert Schweitzer	France	for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life", expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding the Lambaréné Hospital in Gabon
1953	George Catlett Marshall	United States	for the Marshall Plan
1954	United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees	United Nations
1955	[no award]
1956	[no award]
1957	Lester Bowles Pearson	Canada	President of the 7th session of the United Nations General Assembly for introducing peacekeeping forces to resolve the Suez Crisis.
1958	Georges Pire	Belgium	leader of L'Europe du Coeur au Service du Monde, a relief organization for refugees.
1959	Philip Noel-Baker	United Kingdom	"for his lifelong ardent work for international peace and co-operation."
1960	Albert Lutuli	South Africa	President, African National Congress
1961	Dag Hammarskjöld	Sweden	Secretary-General, United Nations (posthumous)
1962	Linus Carl Pauling	United States	"for his campaign against nuclear weapons testing."
1963	International Committee of the Red Cross League of Red Cross societies	Switzerland
1964	Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.	United States	Leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, campaigner for civil rights.
1965	United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF)	United Nations
1966	[no award]
1967	[no award]
1968	René Cassin	France	President, European Court of Human Rights.
1969	International Labour Organization	Switzerland
1970	Norman Borlaug	United States	"for research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre."
1971	Willy Brandt	West Germany	"for West Germany's Ostpolitik, embodying a new attitude towards Eastern Europe and East Germany."
1972	[no award]
1973	Henry A. Kissinger Lê Ðức Thọ (declined the honours)	United States Vietnam	The Vietnam peace accord
1974	Seán MacBride Eisaku Sato	Ireland Japan	president of the International Peace Bureau the Commission of Namibia of the United Nations.
1975	Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov	Soviet Union	Campaigns for human rights
1976	Betty Williams Mairead Corrigan	United Kingdom	Founders of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later renamed Community of Peace People).
1977	Amnesty International	United Kingdom	Campaign against torture
1978	Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat Menachem Begin	Egypt Israel	for negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel
1979	Mother Teresa	Albania India	Poverty awareness campaigner
1980	Adolfo Pérez Esquivel	Argentina	Human rights advocate
1981	United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees	United Nations
1982	Alva Myrdal Alfonso García Robles	Sweden Mexico	Delegates to the United Nations General Assembly on Disarmament
1983	Lech Wałęsa	Poland	Founder of Solidarność; campaigner for human rights
1984	Desmond Mpilo Tutu	South Africa	Anti-apartheid
1985	International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War	United States	"for spreading authoritative information and by creating an awareness of the catastrophic consequences of atomic warfare."
1986	Elie Wiesel	United States Romania	author, Holocaust survivor
1987	Óscar Arias Sánchez	Costa Rica	"for initiating peace negotiations in Central America."
1988	United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces	United Nations	For participation in numerous conflicts since 1956. At the time of the award, 736 people from a variety of nations had lost their lives in peacekeeping efforts.
1989	Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama	Tibet India	"for his consistent resistance to the use of violence in his people's struggle to regain their freedom."
1990	Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв)	Soviet Union	"for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community"
1991	Aung San Suu Kyi ()	Myanmar	"for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights."
1992	Rigoberta Menchú	Guatemala	"in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples."
1993	Nelson Mandela Frederik Willem de Klerk	South Africa	"for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa."
1994	Yasser Arafat (ياسر عرفات) Shimon Peres (שמעון פרס) Yitzhak Rabin (יצחק רבין)	Palestinian National Authority Israel Israel	"for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East."
1995	Joseph Rotblat Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs	Poland United Kingdom Canada	"for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms."
1996	Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo José Ramos-Horta	East Timor	"for their work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor."
1997	International Campaign to Ban Landmines Jody Williams	United States	"for their work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines."
1998	John Hume David Trimble	United Kingdom	"Awarded for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland."
1999	Médecins Sans Frontières	Belgium	"in recognition of the organization's pioneering humanitarian work on several continents."
2000	Kim Dae Jung (김대중)	South Korea	"for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular."
2001	United Nations Kofi Annan	United Nations Ghana	"for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world."
2002	James Earl (Jimmy) Carter, Jr.	United States	former President of the United States, "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
2003	Shirin Ebadi (شيرين عبادي)	Iran	"for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children."
2004	Wangari Maathai	Kenya	"for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace."
2005	International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei (محمد البرادعي)	United Nations Egypt	"for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way."
2006	Muhammad Yunus (মুহাম্মদ ইউনুস) Grameen Bank	Bangladesh	"for advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, especially women, through their pioneering microcredit work."
2007	Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Albert Arnold (Al) Gore, Jr.	United Nations United States	"for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

* Years with multiple motivations for a Nobel Prize.