Behind the Nobel Peace Prize | CSS Essay Material

By: Atle Hetland

Today, I shall again write about the Nobel Peace Prize, as I also did last week and the week
before, noting that this year’s winner is the World Food Programme (WFP). I shall present
some formal aspects regarding the prize and those who award it, and discuss how correct
and fair the awarding has been.

The Nobel Peace Prize is a very prestigious prize—to receive and to award—in Oslo on 10
December. The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s five members are appointed for six years by
the Norwegian Parliament, but the committee is meant to be both neutral and independent
from party politics. Yet, most of the time, the members are retired top politicians. The
current chair, Berit Reiss-Andersen, is a senior lawyer and was a Labour party politician
some twenty-five years ago. Henrik Syse, deputy chair of the committee, is a philosopher, a
part-time lecturer at a private university, and a researcher at the Peace Research Institute
in Oslo (PRIO). His father was a Conservative politician and prime minister in the late
1980s. Outgoing member Thorbjørn Jagland, a former chair, has been a Norwegian Labur
party politician, including foreign minister and prime minister, and has been secretary
general of the Council of Europe (CoE). Anne Enger is a retired top politician of the Centre
(former Agrarian) party and a county governor. Finally, there is Asle Toje, a political
scientist who earlier was a research director at Nobel Institute. There are three substitute
members, Kristin Clemet, Inger Skjelsbæk, and Sofie Høgestøl. Olav Njølstad, a historian
and writer, is the ex officio secretary and director of the Nobel Institute.

Considering that hundreds of candidates are every year nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize, the secretariat, the Nobel Institute and the Committee’s secretary, does most of the
work, including researching the candidates’ backgrounds and achievements, and short-
listing those they find most suitable. The winner or winners (up to three) are announced in
Oslo at the beginning of October, and an award-winning ceremony on 10 December.
Formally, the regulations for the Nobel prizes have been set by the Swedish Nobel
Foundation, although it was decided by Alfred Nobel, the rich industrialist who established
the prize and formulated the statutes in his will in 1895 (he died in 1897), that the
Norwegian Parliament should appoint the awarding committee for the peace prize; this was
at a time when Norway was in a political union with Sweden. The four other prizes are
awarded by the Swedes, in chemistry, physiology or medicine, physics and literature; since
1968; a fifth prize has been added ‘in memory of Alfred Nobel’, notably in economics. The
Nobel Peace Prize was for the first time awarded in 1901. Had Alfred Nobel lived today, he
might well also have established prizes in other fields, such as in social sciences,
environment, gender, development, human rights, and more. But then there are also other
prestigious prizes in those fields.

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 Behind the Nobel Peace Prize | CSS Essay Material

When I today I am writing about issues behind the Nobel Peace Prize, it is because a new
brick of a book of 400 pages has just been published. The book is still only in Norwegian.
The author is Fredrik S. Heffermehl (81), a lawyer and peace activist, who has for many
years written widely about the topic. The book’s title is ‘The Back of the Medal: The Nobel
Peace Prize – Hundred Years of Unused Opportunities’ (In Norwegian, ‘Medaljens bakside:
Nobels fredspris – hundre års ubrukte mulighetter’). Heffermehl’s book is indeed a critical
account of the awarding of the prize, and he finds that just over 20 percent of the prizes
have been awarded to worthy winners, based on the letter and spirit of Alfred Nobel’s will
and his overall ideas. Heffermehl says that most of the time, the prize has not been awarded
for disarmament and struggle for peace and international dialogue. That was what Alfred
Nobel’s will said it should be for, not other well-meaning and good work in those or related
fields—and certainly not for warmongers, such presidents and other leaders who have also
been winners. He even says that some popular prizes were wrongly awarded, such as to the
great humanitarian Mother Theresa (in 1979), Willy Brandt (in 1971), and even Desmond
Tutu (in 1984). It is not a prize for doing good in the world; it is a prize for disarmament,
reduction and abolishing of military weapons, including nuclear weapons, and for
alternative thinking about how to end wars and conflicts, and how to mobilise people for
that. One of the worst prizes, lacking understanding for the age-old Chinese history and
civilisation, was the prize to Liu Xiaobo (in 2009), a poet and human rights activist; the prize
to Henry Kissinger (in 1973), and to Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin (in 1978), are
extreme examples of prizes that should never have been awarded.

It is very pleasing to know that Heffermehl believes that in 1970, President of Pakistan
Abdul Ghaffar Khan should have received the prize, not Norman Borlaug for the ‘Green
Revolution’. Khan had been working in Ghandi’s spirit, and in Islam’s non-violent spirit,
since before Independence in 1947; he had established schools and mobilised people against
inequality, poverty and illiteracy. A prize to Khan would have given focus and inspiration to
Asia’s problems and efforts. Khan was again nominated in 1984. Another Pakistani, Mariyam
Bibi from North Waziristan/Peshawar has recently been nominated; and in 2014, Malala
Yousafzai won the prize at the age of only 17.

Heffermehl considers each Nobel Peace Prize and evaluates if the prize was rightly
awarded, or who should have received it if he finds it was wrongly awarded, or the prize
was cancelled, which has also happened. Heffermehl’s list includes more women than the
committee has chosen. But the most serious shortcomings in the work and awarding of the
prize, which Heffermehl stresses, is simply that the Nobel Committee often does not base
the awarding on Alfred Nobel’s will and on independent and systematic evaluations of the
candidates. He finds they follow their time’s and their own opinions rather than basing it on
firm and neutral considerations; also, sometimes, the committee is even influenced by
political opinions and preferences, directly or indirectly, although it is said that the Nobel

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 Behind the Nobel Peace Prize | CSS Essay Material

Committee shall indeed be independent, not look to what may be in the interest of major- or
superpowers. And then, in the end, in spite of all the shortcomings that Heffermehl explains
about the shortcomings awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, and he is probably right most of
the time, it remains one of the world’s most prestigious and finest prizes, perhaps the
topmost.

Courtesy: The Nation

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