Nobel Peace Prize

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Nobel Peace Prize (where Nobel is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable) is one of five Nobel Prizes bequested by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. Ironically, as some point out, Alfred Nobel was the man whose invention - dynamite - led to the death of thousands if not millions of people. According to the will of Alfred Nobel the 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, unlike the prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, which are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, whose members are chosen by the Norwegian Parliament, is appointed to select the laureate for the Peace Prize, and the prize is awarded by its chairman, currently Dr. Ole Danbolt Mjøs. 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 for Norwegian domestic policy. While Alfred Nobel never told anybody [1] why he didn't give a Swedish body the task of awarding the Peace Prize, one of the suggested reasons has been to prevent the manipulation of the selection process by foreign powers. Other suggestions point to the fact that the Norwegian Assembly (Storting) was the first national legislature to vote support for the international peace movement and Nobel's admiration of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, the Norwegian patriot and leading author at that time.

Nominations for the prize may be made by a broad array of prominent individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies, university professors, international judges, and special advisors to the prize committee. In some years as many as 199 nominations have been received. The nominations are kept secret by the committee which 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 [2]. Nominations from 1901 to 1951 have been released in a database. When the past nominations were released it was discovered that Adolf Hitler was once nominated in 1939, though the nomination was retracted in February of the same year.

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, the Nobel Peace Prize may be awarded to persons or organizations that are in the process of resolving an issue, rather than upon the resolution of the issue. In this way, the Nobel Peace Prize differs from all the other Nobel prizes. Since the prize can be given to individuals involved in ongoing peace processes, some of the awards now appear, with hindsight, questionable, particularly when those processes failed to bear lasting fruit. For example, the awards given to Theodore Roosevelt, Yasser Arafat, Le Duc Tho, and Henry Kissinger were particularly controversial and criticized; the latter prompted two dissenting committee members to resign [3]. The Nobel Committee has also received criticism from right-wing groups who see their decisions as guided by an apparent left-wing bias.

In 2005, the Nobel Peace Center opened, to present the laureates, conflicts, and work for peace around the world.

1 Laureates
2 Controversy
3 See also
4 External links

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Laureates

List of Nobel Prize laureates in Peace from 1901 to the present day.

Year	Individual or Organization	Notes
1901	Jean Henri Dunant (Switzerland)	founder of the Red Cross and initiator of the Geneva Convention.
1901	Frédéric Passy (France)	founder and president of the Société Française pour l'arbitrage entre nations.
1902	Élie Ducommun (Switzerland) and Charles Albert Gobat	honorary secretaries of the Permanent International Peace Bureau in Berne.
1903	Sir William Randal Cremer (UK)	secretary of the International Arbitration League.
1904	Institut de droit international (Gent, Belgium).
1905	Bertha Sophie Felicitas Baronin von Suttner, née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau (Austria-Hungary)	writer, honorary president of the Permanent International Peace Bureau.
1906	Theodore Roosevelt (USA)	president of the United States, for drawing up the peace treaty in the Russo-Japanese War.
1907	Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (Italy)	president of the Lombard League of Peace.
1907	Louis Renault (France)	professor of International Law.
1908	Klas Pontus Arnoldson (Sweden)	founder of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration League.
1908	Fredrik Bajer (Denmark)	honorary president of the Permanent International Peace Bureau.
1909	Auguste Marie Francois 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	Bureau International Permanent de la Paix (Permanent International Peace Bureau), 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 (USA)	for initiating various arbitration agreements.
1913	Henri la Fontaine (Belgium)	president of the Permanent International Peace Bureau.
1914	not awarded	World War I
1915	not awarded	World War I
1916	not awarded	World War I
1917	International Red Cross, Geneva.
1918	Not awarded
1919	Woodrow Wilson (USA)	president of the United States, for founding the League of Nations.
1920	Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois	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	Not awarded
1924	Not awarded
1925	Sir Austen Chamberlain (UK)	for the Locarno Treaties.
1925	Charles Gates Dawes (USA)	chairman of the Allied Reparation 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	Not awarded
1929	Frank B. Kellogg (USA)	for the Briand-Kellogg Pact.
1930	Archbishop Lars Olof Nathan (Jonathan) Söderblom (Sweden)	leader of the ecumenical movement.
1931	Jane Addams (USA)	international president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
1931	Nicholas Murray Butler (USA)	for promoting the Briand-Kellogg Pact.
1932	Not awarded
1933	Sir Norman Angell (Ralph Lane) (UK)	writer, member of the Executive Committee of the League of Nations and the National Peace Council.
1934	Arthur Henderson (UK)	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 a conflict between Paraguay and Bolivia.
1937	The Viscount Cecil of Chelwood	founder and president of the International Peace Campaign.
1938	Nansen International Office For Refugees, Geneva.
1939	Not awarded	World War II
1940	Not awarded	World War II
1941	Not awarded	World War II
1942	Not awarded	World War II
1943	Not awarded	World War II
1944	International Committee of the Red Cross (awarded retroactively in 1945).
1945	Cordell Hull (USA)	for co-initiating the United Nations.
1946	Emily Greene Balch (USA)	honorary international president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
1946	John R. Mott (USA)	chairman of the International Missionary Council and president of the World Alliance of Young Men's Christian Associations
1947	The Friends Service Council (UK) and The American Friends Service Committee (USA)	on behalf of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers.
1948	Not awarded	Apparently it would have been awarded to Mahatma Gandhi had he not died. See the Nobel e-museum article. [4]
1949	The Lord Boyd-Orr (UK)	director General Food and Agricultural Organization, president National Peace Council, president World Union of Peace Organizations.
1950	Ralph Bunche	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 (Germany)	for founding the Lambarene Hospital in Gabon.
1953	American Secretary of State George Catlett Marshall	for the Marshall Plan.
1954	The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
1955	Not awarded
1956	Not awarded
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 (UK)	for his lifelong ardent work for international peace and co-operation.
1960	Albert Lutuli (South Africa)	president of the ANC (African National Congress).
1961	Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden)	secretary-general of the UN (awarded posthumously).
1962	Linus Carl Pauling (USA)	for his campaign against nuclear weapons testing.
1963	International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva.
1963	League of Red Cross Societies, Geneva.
1964	Martin Luther King Jr (USA)	campaigner for civil rights.
1965	United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF)
1966	Not awarded
1967	Not awarded
1968	René Cassin (France)	president of the European Court of Human Rights.
1969	International Labour Organization (I.L.O.), Geneva.
1970	Norman Borlaug (USA)	for research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.
1971	Chancellor Willy Brandt (West Germany)	for West Germany's Ostpolitik, embodying a new attitude towards Eastern Europe and East Germany.
1972	Not awarded
1973	Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger (USA) and Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho (Vietnam, declined)	for the Vietnam peace accord.
1974	Seán MacBride (Ireland)	president of the International Peace Bureau and the Commission of Namibia of the United Nations.
1974	Eisaku Sato (佐藤榮作) (Japan)	prime minister.
1975	Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (USSR)	for his campaigning for human rights.
1976	Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan	founders of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later renamed Community of Peace People).
1977	Amnesty International, London	for its campaign against torture.
1978	President Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat (Egypt) and Prime Minister Menachem Begin (Israel)	for negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel.
1979	Mother Teresa (India)	poverty awareness campaigner (India)
1980	Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Argentina)	human rights
1981	The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
1982	Alva Myrdal (Sweden) and Alfonso García Robles (Mexico)	delegates to the United Nations General Assembly on Disarmament.
1983	Lech Wałęsa (Poland)	founder of Solidarność and campaigner for human rights. Later served as the first president of Poland after the fall of Communism
1984	Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu (South Africa)	for his work against apartheid.
1985	International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Boston.
1986	Elie Wiesel (USA)	author, Holocaust survivor
1987	President Óscar Arias Sánchez (Costa Rica)	for initiating peace negotiations in Central America.
1988	United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces.	For participation in numerous conflicts since 1956. As of 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.
1990	President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (USSR)	"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	Author 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	President Nelson Mandela (South Africa) and former President 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	PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (Israel) and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Israel)	"for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East"
1995	Józef Rotblat (Poland/UK) and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs	"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 Felipe Ximenes Belo (East Timor) and 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 (ICBL) and Jody Williams	"for their work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines"
1998	John Hume and David Trimble (both Northern Ireland)	"for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland"
1999	Médecins Sans Frontières, Brussels.	"in recognition of the organization's pioneering humanitarian work on several continents"
2000	President 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	The United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan (Ghana)	"for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world"
2002	Jimmy Carter (USA) - 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 (شیرین عبادی), (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	The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mohamed ElBaradei (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"

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Controversy

The Nobel Peace Prize is controversial in numerous respects. The parliament of Norway is responsible for appointing the Peace Prize committee. The same parliament has pursused 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. By contrast Sweden, which awards the other Nobel Prizes, has remained neutral.

A particular claimed weakness of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding process is the swiftness of recognition. The scientific and literature Nobel prizes are usually issued in retrospect, often two or three decades after the intellectual 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. This situation may be said to deprive the 'real' peace makers, who may not be recognised for their long-term or subtle approaches. However, others have pointed to the uniqueness of the Peace prize in that its high profile can often focus world attention on particular problems and possibly aid in the peace-efforts themselves. When looked at more closely, the peace-laureates often have a lifetime's history of working at and promoting humanitarian issues, as in the examples of Mother Teresa, a Christian Missionary of foreign origin (1979 laureate) and Aung San Suu Kyi (1991 laureate).

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