Nobel Peace Prize

• 1. Introduction

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  The Nobel Peace Prize carries a contradiction at its heart. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and ballistite, two weapons used to kill people during his own lifetime, arranged in his will for an annual prize dedicated to the promotion of peace between nations. Nobel died in 1896 without leaving any explanation for this choice. The Oxford Dictionary of Contemporary History would eventually call the prize "the most prestigious prize in the world." That reputation rests on more than a century of awards, controversies, notable omissions, and fierce debate about what peace even means. How did a weapons manufacturer's dying wish become the world's most recognized honor? And who decides who deserves it?

• 2. Alfred Nobel's Reasoning

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  Nobel was a trained chemical engineer, so prizes for chemistry and physics made obvious sense. The peace prize was different. The Norwegian Nobel Committee points to Nobel's close friendship with Bertha von Suttner, a peace activist who would later receive the prize herself, as a profound influence on his decision. Some scholars have read the prize as Nobel's attempt to compensate for the destructive power of his inventions. Dynamite and ballistite both saw violent use during his lifetime. The Irish Republican Brotherhood carried out dynamite attacks in the 1880s. Nobel was also the person who transformed Bofors from an iron and steel producer into an armaments company. There is a well-known story that in 1888, when his brother Ludvig died, a French newspaper mistakenly published Alfred's obituary under the headline "The merchant of death is dead." The story holds that this public condemnation prompted Nobel to reconsider his legacy. However, more recent investigative work has been unable to confirm that the obituary, or the newspaper said to have published it, actually existed. The anecdote may be an unsubstantiated myth. What is equally puzzling is why Nobel specified Norway rather than Sweden to administer the prize, given that Norway was ruled in union with Sweden at the time of his death. The Norwegian Nobel Committee speculates that Nobel may have viewed Norway as less encumbered by militaristic traditions. It also notes that, at the close of the 19th century, the Norwegian parliament had become closely involved in Inter-Parliamentary Union efforts to resolve conflicts through mediation and arbitration.

• 3. Who Nominates, Who Decides

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  Each year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee invites a specific group of qualified people to submit nominations. The list of eligible nominators is tightly defined: members of national assemblies and governments, members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Court of Justice at The Hague, professors and associate professors in history, social sciences, philosophy, law, and theology, former prize recipients, and current and past committee members, among others. Nominations must generally be submitted by the beginning of February in the award year. The committee's working language is Norwegian, though nominations have traditionally been accepted in French, German, and English, with most today arriving in Norwegian or English. In 2009, a record 205 nominations came in. That record fell the following year with 237, and fell again in 2011 when 241 nominations were received. Once nominations arrive, the committee creates a shortlist, which is then reviewed by permanent advisers at the Nobel Institute: the Director, the Research Director, and a small group of Norwegian academics. Advisers typically take several months to prepare reports. The committee normally reaches its conclusion in mid-September, though occasionally the final decision has not been made until the last meeting before the official public announcement at the beginning of October. The committee seeks unanimity, but does not always achieve it. Crucially, the statutes of the Nobel Foundation bar any disclosure of nominations, deliberations, or investigations for at least 50 years after a prize is awarded. Because of this, the designation "Nobel Peace Prize Nominee" carries no official weight: it means only that one of the thousands of eligible nominators put forward a name. In 1939, Adolf Hitler received a satirical nomination from a member of the Swedish parliament, specifically mocking the serious but unsuccessful nomination of Neville Chamberlain that same year.

• 4. The Ceremony and Its Medal

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  Every year on the 10th of December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presents the prize in the presence of the King of Norway and the Norwegian royal family. The Nobel Peace Prize is the only Nobel Prize not presented in Stockholm. Its location has moved several times over the decades. From 1901 to 1904, the ceremony took place in the Storting, Norway's parliament. It moved to the Norwegian Nobel Institute, where it was held from 1905 to 1946. From 1947 to 1989, it took place in the atrium of the University of Oslo Faculty of Law, a few hundred meters from Oslo City Hall. Since 1990, Oslo City Hall has been the permanent venue. Each laureate receives a diploma, a medal, and a document confirming the prize amount. The money awarded varies depending on the profitability of the Nobel bequest's investments and exchange rates. Around 2020, awards were on the order of roughly 10 million SEK, which translated to roughly 1 million USD. The medal itself was designed by the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland in 1901. His profile portrait of Alfred Nobel differs from Erik Lindberg's portrait used on the other Nobel prizes. Because Vigeland was not an engraver, Lindberg made the dies for the peace medal. The reverse of the medal shows three men in a fraternal bond and carries the Latin inscription "Pro pace et fraternitate gentium," which translates as "For the peace and brotherhood of men." The edge of each medal is inscribed with the year of the award, the recipient's name, and "Prix Nobel de la Paix."

• 5. Laureates and Notable Omissions

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  As of the most recent count, the prize has been awarded to 111 individuals and 27 organizations. Nineteen women have received it, more than for any other Nobel Prize. Only two recipients have won more than once: the International Committee of the Red Cross has won three times, in 1917, 1944, and 1963, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has won twice, in 1954 and 1981. Lê Duc Tho is the only person who has voluntarily refused to accept the prize. Some of the most discussed chapters in the prize's history involve people who never received it. Mahatma Gandhi is the most prominent case. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has confirmed that Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939-1947, and a few days before his assassination in January 1948. After his death in 1948, the committee declined to award a prize that year on the ground that there was no suitable living candidate. Geir Lundestad, who served as Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2006, called this omission "the greatest omission in our 106-year history." When the Dalai Lama received the prize in 1989, the committee chairman said the award was in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi. The magazine Foreign Policy has listed Corazon Aquino, Eleanor Roosevelt, Václav Havel, and Ken Saro-Wiwa alongside Gandhi as people who never won the prize but, in that publication's view, should have.

• 6. Controversy and Criticism

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  The Nobel Peace Prize has attracted serious criticism for most of its existence. A recurring charge is that the committee awards the prize for aspirations rather than verified accomplishments, allowing the prize to be deployed for political effect at the risk of destabilizing fragile peace processes. The 1973 award to Henry Kissinger and Lê Duc Tho is frequently cited as the most controversial single decision: two members of the selection committee resigned in protest, and the press responded with widespread derision. Other awards that have drawn sustained criticism include those to Mikhail Gorbachev, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Abiy Ahmed, the European Union, and María Corina Machado. In 2011, a feature story in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten gathered major criticisms in one place: the committee, critics argued, should draw members from professional and international backgrounds rather than retired politicians; the criteria used to select a recipient are too opaque; and adherence to Nobel's original will should be stricter. Norwegian historian Øivind Stenersen argued in the same publication that Norway has been able to use the prize as an instrument for nation-building and for advancing the country's foreign policy and economic interests. Michael Nobel, grandson of one of Alfred's two brothers, also criticized what he saw as the politicization of the award and claimed the committee has not always acted in accordance with Nobel's will. Author Christopher Hitchens described the prize as "a huge bore and a fraud" in his memoir Hitch-22. The most recent prize went to María Corina Machado for her work promoting democratic rights in Venezuela and her effort to achieve what the committee called a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.