The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes; it is awarded in Norway by the Nobel Committee. The other four, awarded in Sweden, are in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature. Each laureate receives a gold medal, a diploma and a quantity of money. The prize has increasingly been rewarded to various world leaders for political reasons.[1]
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of five persons who are chosen by the Norwegian Parliament.[2] Any individual who meets the nominee criteria can nominate someone for the award, resulting in many nominations. It has been awarded 95 times since 1901.
Peace was the fifth and final prize area that Alfred Nobel mentioned in his will:
“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- - -/ one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” (Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel written in 1895.) [3]
In 1925 U.S. Vice President Charles Dawes was awarded the Peace Prize for stabilizing the German economy with the Dawes Plan (1924). It involved making humanitarian loans to Germany which were used to pay reparations to Britain and France and other Allies, who in turn paid off their war debts to the U.S. The Plan succeeded in restoring prosperity to Europe.
The dictator Adolf Hitler was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939 for the Munich Pact. Soviet dicatator Joseph Stalin was nominated at the end of World War II in 1945.[4]
In 1964 Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His acceptance speech started saying:
"I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when twenty-two million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice... I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him." [5] |
In 1978 Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin jointly won the prize for the Camp David Accords. Having made peace with infidels, Sadat was murdered a little more than two years later by radical Islamic terrorists.
In 1989, after Soviet troops moved into Tbilisi, Georgia to crack down on protests by killing at least 20 people and leaving hundreds injured or poisoned by gas,[6] Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his efforts to preserve communist enslavement in the Soviet Republics.
In 1991 Aung San Suu Kyi won the prize; in 2016 Aung San Suu Kyi became the State Counsellor or head of government of the Chinese Communist allied state of Myanmar; after taking office the Myanmar ruling junta massacred thousands of Rohingya in a genocide, forcing more than 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh..[7][8][9][10][11]
Nelson Mandela won in 1993 with former South Africa president Frederik Willem de Klerk for a peaceful transfer of power to black majority rule.[12]
Yassir Arafat, the "father of modern terrorism" and responsible for thousands of murders,[13] received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, together with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for the Oslo Accords. Even after receiving the award, thousands more died in the Palestinian Intifada between 2000-2005 which he commanded.[14]
Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002.[15]
In 2009 Barack Obama became the third sitting U.S. President[16] to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".[17] Obama stated that he was "surprised and deeply humbled" to receive the unexpected award,[18] and also said, "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize—men and women who have inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace".[16] The award was widely criticized given Obama's then lack of accomplishments.[19] Obama went on to kill some 4,700 people in drone strikes[20]—600 of which were innocents, and even remarked, "I'm really good at killing people."[21]
For the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has received 241 valid nominations, among them, 188 individuals and 53 organizations. This is the highest number of nominations ever received. The previous record was 237 different candidates, in 2010. [1]
The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize was a joint award to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai.[22]
In 2021 the predominantly white Black Lives Matter terrorist organization, which caused $2 billion in property damages and dozens of deaths during the 2020 leftwing insurrection,[23] was nominated by a leftist member of the Norwegian parliament.
Categories: [Nobel Prize] [Nobel Laureates in Peace]