Nobel Peace Prize: Saluting peace-makers, stirring political controversy

Nalaka Gunawardene

Every year in October, the world’s news media anxiously stands by for six separate announcements from Scandinavia. Over a few autumn days, these reveal the winners of Nobel prizes in economics, medicine, physics, chemistry, literature (all selected by Swedish awarding committees) and for peace (by the Norwegian Nobel Committee).

Of these, the one that grabs the most headlines — and often stirs the greatest amount of debate — is the Nobel Peace Prize, which this year was announced on October 10. This year’s winner is former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari.

Al Gore: Winner 2007	Mahatma Gandhi: A notable omission	Marti Ahtisaari: Winner 2008

Oslo becomes a focus of attention just before and after the winner is announced. During the last hour counting down to the announcement, as news hounds collectively hold their breath, the secretary to the Nobel Committee will try to reach the winner (or joint winners) by telephone to personally break the news. Given the truly global scope of the prize, the person concerned could be anywhere on the planet.

“It is only fair that we break the news first to our laureate/s, as our decision will have a significant impact on their lives — and certainly on their schedules,” says Professor Geir Lundestad, the Norwegian historian who has held this position since 1990.

Lundestad, also director of Norwegian Nobel Institute, would typically give a 45 minute advance warning to the laureate — this is the famous ‘call from Oslo’ (it becomes the ‘call from Stockholm’ for other laureates).

Winner incredulous

As the bearer of this news, Lundestad literally gets his ‘15 minutes of fame’ in the world media, but the spotlight quickly shifts to the man, woman or institution whose name he would announce. He has had interesting experiences calling the latest laureates, who have reacted variously with complete disbelief, or demanded proof that it was not a prank. Some were just too astounded to talk.

For example, the 1995 prize was equally divided between the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and its founding secretary general, British nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat.

They were honoured for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics. But when he received the call, Rotblat insisted that it must be a mistake: the media had been speculating (then British prime minister) John Major to win the prize for his work on Northern Ireland’s peace process.

Being assured of the call’s authenticity, Rotblat stepped out for a long walk. He wasn’t at home when the world’s media beat a path to his door a short while later.

Lundestad has to strike a balance between giving such early warnings and guarding against the news prematurely leaking to the media. In some years, journalists keep a vigil at the homes or offices of favourite contenders.

Shortly before announcing the 2007 prize to Al Gore and the UN Climate Panel, for their work on climate change, Lundestad rang the New Delhi office of IPCC chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri. Pretending to be a Norwegian journalist, he asked Pachauri’s secretary whether any media representatives were present. Being told yes, he just hung up.

It’s not just the news media who eagerly await — and endlessly speculate about — the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s name. The bookmakers draw up a list of favourites, assessing each one’s odds at winning the prize.

In some years, speculations and educated guesses turn out to be correct — the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee, comprising independent experts appointed by the country’s Parliament for six year terms, deliver a decision that many have anticipated.

But in other years, the Committee’s decision stuns the world, as it did when Rotblat and Pugwash were chosen. “I have never seen so many jaws drop as in 1995,” recalls Lundestad.

Over a decade later, a bookmakers’ list of 60 likely candidates for the 2006 prize did not even include the eventual winners — Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh and the Grameen Bank he founded. The bets were instead on Finland’s former President Ahtisaari for brokering peace in Indonesia’s Aceh province (he won it this year), Chinese human rights activists and former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans.

In contrast, when the International Atomic Energy Agency and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, won the previous year’s prize, they were indeed the bookmakers’ favourite.

Expanded scope

It has become harder to guess the winner/s in recent years, especially because the committee has been expanding the scope of the prize. It has recognised the nexus between peace, human security and environmental degradation (Wangaari Mathaai of Kenya in 2004; Al Gore and IPCC in 2007) and the link between poverty reduction and peace (Muhammud Yunus and Grameen, 2006).

Despite this, the prize remains an essentially political one, reflecting that most conflicts — and their resolution — are largely influenced by political considerations.

This prompts Lundestad to ask a key question: can five unknown Norwegians achieve peace within and among nations of our world — the worthy goal that has eluded so many leaders and activists?

Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, all Norwegian nationals, may not be particularly well known beyond their small and prosperous country, but their annual selection reverberates around the world. It has changed the course of history more than once in the 107 years since the prize was established in 1901.

But Lundestand insists that the Nobel Peace Prize cannot claim to have achieved peace on its own.

“It’s the laureates who work tirelessly and sometimes at great personal risk to pursue peace and harmony in their societies or throughout the world,” he told a recent meeting of Fredskorpset, the Norwegian peace corp, in Oslo. “With the Nobel Peace Prize, we try to recognise, honour and support the most deserving among them.”

For high profile laureates, the prize becomes an additional accolade in their already well known credentials. But for those who are less known outside their home countries, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is akin to being given a ‘loud speaker’ - it helps to amplify their causes, struggles and voices.

In today’s media-saturated information society, the value of such an amplifier cannot be overestimated, Lundestad says. As many laureates will confirm, it allows them to rise above the cacophony of the Global Village.

The Nobel Peace Prize has so far been awarded to 95 individuals and 20 organisations. In doing so, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to carry out the last wish of Swedish engineer, chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel (1833 - 1896). He wrote that it should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.

Selection process

To decide who has done the most to promote peace is a highly political matter, and scarcely a matter of cool scholarly judgement, says Lundestad. “The task requires an ability and a will to view conflicts in the world community as objectively as possible while keeping a strong commitment to certain common moral and political principles.”

The committee has a thorough selection process. Various checks and balances are in place so that the prize does not become, even inadvertently, an instrument of Norwegian foreign policy.

Contrary to popular belief, the nomination process is neither exclusive nor secretive. Lundestad reiterates that several thousand people worldwide are eligible to serve as nominators, especially after rules were revised in 2003. This includes members of national assemblies and governments; members of international courts of law; university chancellors; university professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology; as well as all former laureates. (For details, see Nobel Peace official website at: http://nobelpeaceprize.org/eng_com_nom.html).

“Being nominated is not such a difficult task, and nor is it particularly significant by itself,” says Lundestad. “Some individuals have been nominated repeatedly, and no one is barred from being nominated. If a member of Iraq’s former parliament wanted, he could have nominated even Saddam Hussein.”

To be considered by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, nominations must be postmarked no later than 1 February each year. (Later nominations are considered in the following year.) In recent years, the Committee has been receiving over 140 different nominations per year for the Peace Prize. (The numbers of nominating letters are much higher, since many are for the same candidates.)

After applications close, the committee works over several months to narrow down the nominations to a shortlist, which goes through vigorous verification. Several expert advisors assist in this specialised task, but the Committee alone make the decisions. Their choice is announced in early or mid October, and the prize awarding ceremony takes place at the Oslo City Hall on December 10.

Glaring omissions

Notwithstanding the lengthy and careful process, the peace prize does not have a perfect record. It has managed to miss out on some highly deserving individuals, and not all laureates have been universally applauded.

The most glaring omission is Mahatma Gandhi, arguably the greatest icon of non-violent political transformation of the twentieth century. He was nominated five times — in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was assassinated in January 1948.

The rules of the prize at the time allowed posthumous presentation, but the then committee somehow decided not to do so. (Former UN secretary general Dag Hammarskj”ld, is the only person to have been awarded the prize posthumously, after he died in a plane crash while on a peace mission in Africa. The rules have since been changed and only living persons may now be awarded.)

Gandhi’s omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee. When the Dalai Lama was awarded the 1989 prize, the chairman of the committee said that this was “in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi”.

But there is absolutely nothing that can be done now to rectify this historically omission, says Lundestad. It stands as a stark reminder of imperfect human judgement.

The prize has not achieved a very good gender balance either. Only 12 out of 95 individual winners are women — half awarded in the past 30 years.

A few laureates might not have deserved to be so honoured — but Lundestad won’t name any (he wants to keep his job). This particular insight awaits a post-retirement book.

The prize has frequently sparked controversy. This is only to be expected given the high level political message it sends out to the world.

Despite its flaws, however, there is little argument that the Nobel Peace Prize is the most prestigious of all awards and prizes in the world. At Swedish Krona 10 million (a little over 1.5 million US Dollars), it carries a useful sum of money, which may be divided among no more than three recipients at a time. It is not the most lavish among more than 100 peace prizes in the world, but the richer ones lack the global brand recognition the Nobel has achieved.

Creating peace

The most important question, for historians and scholars of peace, is the political and social impact of the Nobel Peace Prize. Lundestad is too modest when he says that it is not the prize itself but the laureates who achieve progress in various spheres — from nuclear disarmament and humanitarian intervention to safeguarding human rights and poverty reduction.

“We may have contributed - and that is quite enough,” he says. “We don’t claim to have ended the Cold War, or brought down apartheid in South Africa.”

But the prize’s influence and catalytic effect are indisputable. When the 1983 prize was given to Polish trade union leader Lech Walesa, it triggered a series of events that led to the crumbling of the Iron Curtain, collapse of the Berlin Wall and the eventual disintegration of the once mighty Soviet Union. There was delicious irony when the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, became the 1990 peace prize laureate.

In another example, there have been four South African laureates over the years: Albert Lutuli (1960), Bishop Desmond Tutu (1984), Nelson Mandela and F W de Klerk (sharing 1993 prize). These prizes kept international focus and pressure on South Africa’s struggles for racial equality and justice.

However, Lundestad says, “We would never claim that the prize was a major factor in ending apartheid in South Africa. The prize was part of the wider international support that sustained pressure on the white minority government. In some respects, the 1960 prize to Lutuli was the most significant — it triggered a process that culminated in the early 1990s.”

He acknowledges, at the same time, that the Nobel Peace Prize has enhanced the profile of key political activists in hot spots like Burma, East Timor and South Africa. It has also helped sustain the international community’s and media’s interest in other long drawn struggles.

And as Lundestad and his committee of five ‘unknown Norwegians’ know all too well, there is still so much unfinished business in our troubled and quarrelsome world for them to take things easy.

[Based on a lecture given by Geir Lundestad in Oslo in September 2008, to Norwegian Fredskorpset during its the international advisory council in Oslo. Additional information drawn from the official Nobel Prize website, http://nobelprize.org]