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The peace prize:
Pro pace et fraternitate gentium “For the peace and
brotherhood of men”
The promise of Obama
Muthu Padmakumara
  Mahatma
Gandhi, though nominated on five occasions, that’s right, the strongest
proponent of peace in the 20th Century, was not awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize. (You can read the details on the Nobel Prize website under
‘Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate’).
The Peace Prize has taken many sharp turns since. There have been all
types of recipients. For freedom fights, reconciliation, attempting
peace, and yes, the favourite, for making the world a better place
awards have been given to Mother Theresa, Mikhail Gorbachev, Dalai Lama,
Nelson Mandela, to also the UN, ICRC and 20 such organizations for their
work.
Originally as per Alfred Nobel’s last will and testament, it is
dedicated to ‘the person who shall have done the most or the best work
for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of
standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.’
Today we are told it is being used as an encouragement for peaceful
settlement of issues and conflicts, the promise of actual peace and
brotherhood of men, tomorrow.
This is where Obama comes in. Like many around the world I too dare
to believe in change and hope. And this would not be the first time the
Peace Prize was given for hope. However, the 2009 prize would not be for
only that, but perhaps also for ‘not making matters worse.’
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The Nobel Peace Prize
for 2009
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided
that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to
President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to
strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between
peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to
Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear
weapons.
Obama has as President created a new
climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy
has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role
that the United Nations and other international institutions
can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as
instruments for resolving even the most difficult
international conflicts. The vision of a world free from
nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms
control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA
is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great
climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and
human rights are to be strengthened.
Only very rarely has a person to the same
extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its
people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in
the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so
on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the
majority of the world’s population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel
Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that
international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is
now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses
Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take
our share of responsibility for a global response to global
challenges.” |
On a scale of plus to minus ten there are discernible markers. In the
negative end there is ‘breaking peace’, then ‘not making matters worse’,
and zero which is ‘inactivity,’ with ‘trying to peace’ and the
‘cessation of conflict’ in the positive.
Where does Obama and America fall into this?
This brought to my mind a moment from this past summer when I was in
the US. At an airport in the evening I quite unexpectedly heard a
growing sound of rhythmic clapping. Startled, curious, I looked this way
and that to find the source if not the cause of this applause. From the
baseball game next door? Very loud TV? Surely, a celebrity has been
spotted at the airport, I thought. I finally located something of
reception committee, dressed in matching tees, crowding at the Arrivals
Gate. And then doors opened.
There stood a female soldier of the US Army.
They were returning from Iraq - they were returning home.
With a pang in my heart for soldiers and child soldiers in Sri Lanka
I was caught in a tide of joy and cheer that went up in the increasing
audience and my hands came together of their own accord as my face drew
a smile. Was it happiness? Perhaps relief? Then it struck me, I was
having my zen moment of ‘brotherhood’. Yes Obama is beginning to sort
out the remains of Bush’s “War on Terror.” And beginnings do need
encouragement.
What about endings?
I suppose if Prabhakaran and President Mahinda Rajapaksa were seen to
be shaking hands on some international stage, while meeting the Nobel
Committee’s ‘touchy-feely’ approach to peace, we would have a repetition
of the 1994 Peace Prize, the classic photograph of Prize winners Yasser
Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. Nearly 15 years later Middle
East continues to host a major conflict in the world.
But in Sri Lanka the war has ended. After attempts at all-party
conferences, peace talks, mediations, ceasefires, and disarmament, the
30 year military conflict has decisively ended. Perhaps the reader would
wrack his brain and think of an instance in the recent times where a
long-term conflict has come to an end. I can’t think of such a case
myself. Clearly there is no prize for ending war.
Obama has said much (I read that Peace Prize should be renamed as
‘Nobel Speech Prize’) but done nothing new, nor achieved results for
old.
There has been no ‘extraordinary efforts to strengthen international
diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’ though America being so down
in the red, the slightest movement would be quite something. Like, yes
Obama has reached out to the Muslim world. As have many before him. With
no greater result.
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The photograph of Prize winners Yasser
Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin |
He ‘has captured the world’s attention - and given them hope’. And so
did Princess Diana - whose tireless anti-landmine campaign amongst so
many other charitable works brought new light into old issues and hope
for many people from many walks of life.
But she is no more, and the world needs a figurehead. Obama is the
poster-boy. Let’s hope that unlike the 1994 Medal, this will bring the
results that the Nobel Committee expects. Never mind those who actually
ended conflicts today. Let’s hope Iraq and Afghanistan wars end tomorrow
and no new ones are begun.
For Obama is at the beginning (after all the award is for work of the
previous year and when nominations closed in February Obama had only
been in office for a few weeks). There is time yet, for hope or
disaster. In the words of a world phenomenon born on the same day as the
prize awarded, let us “give peace a chance.” (John Lennon)
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