Nobel Prize Controversies - Peace

Peace

Nobel Peace Prize controversies often reach beyond the academic community that surrounds them. Awards have been called politically motivated, premature, or guided by a faulty definition of what constitutes work for peace.

The 2010 prize went to Liu Xiaobo "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". Liu was imprisoned at the time of the award and neither he nor his family were allowed to attend the ceremony. The Chinese government alleged that Liu did not promote "international friendship, disarmament, and peace meetings", the prize's stated goal. They further alleged that Liu Xiaobo had participated in organizations that received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, which they claimed brought his status and the prize itself into question. Some Chinese groups criticized Liu's selection due to his low profile and obscurity within China and among Chinese youth. Critics such as Tariq Ali, Barry Sautman, and Yan Hairong also criticized Liu's selection for his long support of American invasions of other nations, particularly Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq. A Chinese group responded by creating a rival award—the Confucius Peace Prize.

The 2009 prize went to Barack Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". The award, given in the first year of Obama's presidency, received criticism that it was undeserved, premature and politically motivated. Obama himself said that he felt "surprised" by the win and did not consider himself worthy of the award, but nonetheless accepted it. Obama's peace prize was called a "stunning surprise" by The New York Times. Much of the surprise arose from the fact that nominations for the award had been due by 1 February 2009, only 12 days after Obama took office. In an October 2011 interview. Thorbjørn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, defended the award on narrow grounds:

"paved the way for new negotiations with the Russian Federation about nuclear arms. If you look at the will of Alfred Nobel that goes directly to what he said that the prize should go to the person that has worked for—he called it reduction of standing armies but in today's terms it means arm control and disarmament."

The 2007 prize went to Al Gore and the IPCC, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". The award received criticism on the grounds of political motivation and because the winners' work was not directly related to ending conflict. Separately, an individual working for the IPCC at the time, Michael E. Mann has generated controversy by claiming to be a prize winner in a 2012 court filing for a defamation suit. The Nobel Committee has made clear that this is a recurring problem among the many organizations who win prizes.

The 2004 prize went to Wangari Maathai "for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace". Controversially, she was reported by the Kenyan newspaper Standard and Radio Free Europe to have stated that HIV/AIDS was originally developed by Western scientists in order to depopulate Africa. She later denied these claims, although the Standard stood by its reporting. Additionally, in a Time magazine interview, she hinted at HIV's non-natural origin, saying that someone knows where it came from and that it "...did not come from monkeys."

The 2002 prize was awarded to Jimmy Carter for "decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." The announcement of the award came shortly after the US House and Senate authorized President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq in order to enforce UN Security Council resolutions requiring that Baghdad give up weapons of mass destruction. Asked if the selection of the former president was a criticism of Bush, Gunnar Berge, head of the Nobel Prize committee, said: "With the position Carter has taken on this, it can and must also be seen as criticism of the line the current US administration has taken on Iraq." Carter declined to comment on the remark in interviews, saying that he preferred to focus on the work of the Carter Center.

The 1994 prize went to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin "to honour a political act which called for great courage on both sides, and which has opened up opportunities for a new development towards fraternity in the Middle East." Arafat's critics have referred to him as an "unrepentant terrorist with a long legacy of promoting violence". Kåre Kristiansen, a Norwegian member of the Nobel Committee, resigned in protest at Arafat's award, calling him a "terrorist". Supporters of Arafat claimed fairness, citing Nelson Mandela, who had never renounced political violence, and had been a founder member of Umkhonto we Sizwe. On the other hand, Edward Said was critical of Peres and Rabin and the entire Oslo Accords.

The 1992 prize was awarded to Rigoberta Menchú for "her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples". The prize-winner's memoirs, which had brought her to fame, turned out to be partly fictitious.

The 1989 prize was awarded to the 14th Dalai Lama. The committee's selection was not well-accepted by the Chinese government, who regards his violent (receiving CIA funding for staging an unsuccessful violent coup d'état in Tibet) and nonviolent actions for Tibetan self-determination as a threat to national security. Additionally, the Nobel Prize Committee cited their intention to put pressure on China.

The 1978 prize went to Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt during the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel, and Menachem Begin "for the Camp David Agreement, which brought about a negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel". Both had fought against British rule of their respective countries, and Begin was involved in a failed plot to assassinate German chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

The 1973 prize went to North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho and United States Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger "for the 1973 Paris Peace Accords intended to bring about a cease-fire in the Vietnam War and a withdrawal of the American forces". Tho later declined the prize. North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in April 1975 and reunified the country. Kissinger's history included the secret 1969–1975 bombing campaign against North Vietnamese Army troops infiltrating the South via Cambodia, the alleged U.S. involvement in Operation Condor—a mid-1970s campaign of kidnapping and murder coordinated among the intelligence and security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile (see details), Paraguay, and Uruguay—as well as the death of French nationals under the Chilean junta. He also supported the Turkish Intervention in Cyprus resulting in the de facto partition of the island. According to Irwin Abrams, this prize was the most controversial to date. Two Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigned in protest. When the award was announced, hostilities were continuing.

The 1945 prize was awarded to Cordell Hull as "Former Secretary of State; Prominent participant in the originating of the UN". Hull was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Secretary of State during the SS St. Louis Crisis. The St. Louis sailed from Hamburg in the summer of 1939 carrying over 950 Jewish refugees, seeking asylum from Nazi persecution. Initially, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt showed some willingness to take in some of those on board, but Hull and Southern Democrats voiced vehement opposition, and some of them threatened to withhold their support of Roosevelt in the 1940 election. On 4 June 1939 Roosevelt denied entry to the ship, which was waiting in the Florida strait between Florida and Cuba. The passengers began negotiations with the Cuban government, but those broke down. Forced to return to Europe, over a quarter of its passengers subsequently died in the Holocaust.

Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948. A decades-later Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission. Geir Lundestad, Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2006 said, "The greatest omission in our 106 year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace prize, whether Nobel committee can do without Gandhi is the question". The Nobel Committee of the time may have tacitly acknowledged its error, however, when in 1948 (the year of his death), it made no award, stating "there was no suitable living candidate". A later committee awarded the prize posthumously to the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961, who died after being nominated.

One of the most controversial prizes was the prize awarded to Carl von Ossietzky in 1936, which led two committee members to resign. In an unprecedented move, King Haakon VII of Norway was absent from the award ceremony, and the Norwegian conservative press, including leading daily Aftenposten, condemned the award. The award led to Adolf Hitler forbidding any German to receive any of the Nobel Prizes in the future, and his prize was not allowed to be mentioned in the German press.