War and Peace II: Nobel Peace Prize

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes given annually for chemistry, physics, literature, and medicine, which are awarded in Alfred Nobel’s home country of Sweden, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded here in Oslo. A museum at the Nobel Peace Prize Center here remembers the 137 laureates who have received the award since 1901.

Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, was unlucky at love, and had no children. One morning in his daily newspaper he read an erroneous obituary describing his death, declaring that he would be remembered primarily as an international arms merchant. Nobel became concerned about his legacy and established a foundation to award a prize to the men and women who contributed the most to improve the human condition.

A guide led us through a remarkably honest portrayal of the history of the award. She began by recalling early recipients who favored a league or congress of nations to allow member states to discuss their differences and thus avoid war. Our guide candidly admitted that there were a few instances where the committee’s decision was controversial, as when Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger shared the prize in 1973. Both of their nations were still at war with one another in South Vietnam. The committee is not required to respond to public questions about their decisions, which are final, unalterable, and irretrievable, and it did not offer any rationale for this unusual decision. However, others near the issue did mount a defense by stating that by 1973 both Vietnam and the United States, through the Paris Peace Talks, were at least attempting to achieve peace. Therefore, the recipients deserved the award.

Another controversial decision was made in October 2019 when the committee awarded the prize to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for attempting to achieve peace with neighboring Eritrea. At the time of the presentation, their decision seemed a reasonable choice. However, no sooner was the prize awarded than the Prime Minister initiated a program of massive relocation, aggression, and suspension of human rights. His administration was also noted for “weaponizing hunger,” using deliberate deprivation of food as a political tool. Similar questions might arise over the presentation of the prize to An San Suu Kyi in 1991. The daughter of the “Father of the Nation,” of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), she protested against the ruling military junta. She was under house arrest for fifteen years between 1989 and 2010, becoming one of the world’s best known political prisoners. Even so, once ascending to the top of the Myanmar government, her role in a program that has been described as genocide against a minority group, the Rohingya Muslims, has raised questions about her identity as a peacemaker.

Other prizes have indeed been awarded to people who could unquestionably be considered as modern saints, however. Though rather obscure today, my own prize would be given to the 1935 winner of the Nobel. Carl von Ossietzky warned the world in 1933 that Hitler was re-arming the German nation for a repeat of World War I. The world did not listen. Ossietzsky, a newspaper reporter already in prison, was never allowed to receive the prize. He was later executed by the Nazis.

Mother Theresa received the prize in 1979. So did seventeen-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who in 2014 received the award for her efforts to guarantee an education for children in her native Pakistan. For her efforts, the Taliban shot her in the head, and have attempted to kill her on two other occasions. Recently she graduated from Oxford University in England. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a recipient, as is Russian physicist Andre Sakharov (twice). So is Nelson Mandela. The list goes on.

For me it was interesting to see how even the notion of peace changes from generation to generation. In the early twentieth century the prize seemed to flow toward those who favored disarmament. Later the issue of world hunger produced a large number of Nobel laureates. Recently prizes have been awarded to those who work to achieve rights for women and children. In the last few years, awards have been given to crusaders opposing the worldwide sex trade and human trafficking. The rights of children and the need for education are forefront in the committee’s concern now, when one can remember a time when children were hardly ever even considered important.

I would love to sit down with you over a cup of coffee and discuss why it has been so difficult for peace to prevail in our world. There is not room to do that in this blog. However, I salute Alfred Nobel and his committee for recognizing those people who selflessly sought to relieve human suffering. Visiting this site today was for me an inspiration.Read more