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Nobel Peace Prize

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Conflict and Peace

   Lester B. Pearson after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize
   Lester B. Pearson after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize

   The Nobel Peace Prize ( Swedish and Norwegian: Nobels fredspris) is the
   name of one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish
   industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. Nobel died in 1896 and did not
   leave an explanation for his choice of this Nobel prize category. The
   categories for chemistry and physics were obvious choices as he was a
   trained chemical engineer. The reason behind the peace prize is less
   clear. Some have said it was Nobel's way to compensate for developing
   destructive forces (Nobel's inventions included dynamite and
   ballistite). However, none of his explosives, except for ballistite,
   were used in any war during his lifetime. According to Nobel's will,
   the Peace 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. For
   the past decade, the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony at the Oslo City Hall
   has been followed the next day by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, which
   is broadcast to over 150 countries and more than 450 million households
   around the world. The Concert has received worldwide fame and the
   participation of top celebrity hosts and performers. The selection of
   Nobel Peace Prize winners sometimes causes controversy, as the list of
   winners includes people who formerly used violent methods of
   problem-solving, but then later made exceptional concessions to
   non-violence in the attempt to achieve peace.

Appointment process

   The Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway.
   The Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway.

   The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which
   selects the Laureate for the Peace Prize. The Committee chairman,
   currently Dr. Ole Danbolt Mjøs, awards the Prize itself. 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 only for Norwegian
   domestic policy. Alfred Nobel never explained why he wanted a Norwegian
   rather than Swedish body to award the Peace Prize. As a consequence,
   many people have speculated about Nobel's intentions. For instance,
   Nobel may have wanted to prevent the manipulation of the selection
   process by foreign powers, and as Norway did not have any foreign
   policy, the Norwegian government could not be influenced.

Nominations

   Nobel Peace Prize Winners the Dalai Lama & Bishop Tutu. Vancouver,
   Canada, 2004.
   Nobel Peace Prize Winners the Dalai Lama & Bishop Tutu. Vancouver,
   Canada, 2004.

   Nominations for the Prize may be made by a broad array of qualified
   individuals, including former recipients, members of national
   assemblies and congresses, university professors, international judges,
   and special advisors to the Prize Committee. In some years as many as
   199 nominations have been received. The Committee keeps the nominations
   secret and 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 . Nominations from 1901 to 1951, however, have
   been released in a database. When the past nominations were released it
   was discovered that Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939, though the
   nomination was retracted in February of the same year. Other infamous
   nominees included Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.

   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,
   or creating world peace rather than upon the resolution of the issue.
   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, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak
   Rabin, Yasser Arafat, Lê Ðức Thọ, and Henry Kissinger were particularly
   controversial and criticized; the latter prompted two dissenting
   Committee members to resign .

   In 2005, the Nobel Peace Centre opened. It serves to present the
   Laureates, their work for peace, and the ongoing problems of war and
   conflict around the world.

Controversy

   The Nobel Peace Prize has throughout its history sparked controversy.
   The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Peace Prize Committee, but
   pacifist critics argue that the same Parliament has pursued 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. However, the Parliament has no say in the
   award issue. A member of the Committee cannot at the same time be a
   member of the Parliament, and the Committee includes former members
   from all major parties, including those parties that oppose NATO
   membership.

   A particular claimed weakness of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding process
   is the swiftness of recognition. The scientific and literary 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, especially as many of the judges cannot themselves
   be said to be impartial observers. In pro-democracy struggles, it may
   be said that the 'real' peace-makers may not be recognized 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.

   On closer inspection, the peace-laureates often have a lifetime's
   history of working at and promoting humanitarian issues, as in the
   examples of German medic Albert Schweitzer (1952 laureate), Dr. Martin
   Luther King, Jr., an African-American civil rights activist (1964
   laureate); Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic missionary nun (1979
   laureate); and Aung San Suu Kyi, a Buddhist nonviolent pro-democracy
   activist (1991 laureate). Still others are selected for tireless
   efforts, as in the examples of Jimmy Carter and Mohamed ElBaradei.
   Others, even today, are quite controversial, due to the recipient's
   political activity, as in the case of Henry Kissinger (1973 laureate),
   Mikhail Gorbachev (1990 laureate) or Yasser Arafat (1994 laureate).

   A widely discussed criticism of the peace-prize are the notable
   omissions, namely the failure to award individuals with widely
   recognized contributions to peace. The list includes Mahatma Gandhi,
   Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, Steve Biko, Hélder Câmara, Raphael
   Lemkin, Herbert Hoover, Jose Figueres Ferrer and Oscar Romero. In
   particular, the omission of the Indian leader Gandhi has been widely
   discussed, including public statements by the various members of Nobel
   Committee. , It has been acknowledged by the committee that Gandhi was
   nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he
   was murdered in January 1948. The omission has been publicly regretted
   by later members of the Nobel Committee; when the Dalai Lama was
   awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said
   that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi."

   Research by anthropologist David Stoll into Rigoberta Menchú, the 1992
   recipient, revealed some fabrications in her biography, "Me llamo
   Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia" (My Name is Rigoberta
   Menchú and this is how my Conscience was Born), translated into English
   as " I, Rigoberta Menchú". Menchú later admitted changing some details
   about her background. After the initial controversy, the Nobel
   Committee dismissed calls to revoke her Nobel prize because of the
   reported falsifications. Professor Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the
   Committee, said her prize "was not based exclusively or primarily on
   the autobiography". . According to the Nobel Committee, "Stoll approves
   of her Nobel prize and has no question about the picture of army
   atrocities which she presents. He says that her purpose in telling her
   story the way she did 'enabled her to focus international condemnation
   on an institution that deserved it, the Guatemalan army'.

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.
      Frédéric Passy (France) founder and president of the Société
                       d'arbitrage entre les 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.
           Louis Renault (France) professor of International Law.
    1908 Klas Pontus Arnoldson (Sweden) founder of the Swedish Peace and
                          Arbitration Association.
         Fredrik Bajer (Denmark) honorary president of the Permanent
                         International Peace Bureau.
     1909 Auguste Marie Francois Beernaert (Belgium) member of the Cour
                         Internationale d'Arbitrage.
     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.
    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, as foremost
                     promoter of the League of Nations.
   1920 Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois (France) 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.
           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
         1925 Sir Austen Chamberlain (UK) for the Locarno Treaties.
   Charles Gates Dawes (USA) chairman of the Allied Reparation Commission
                      and originator of the Dawes Plan.
           1926 Aristide Briand (France) for the Locarno Treaties.
            Gustav Stresemann (Germany) for the Locarno Treaties.
   1927 Ferdinand Buisson (France) founder and president of the League for
                                Human Rights.
       Ludwig Quidde (Germany) delegate to numerous peace conferences.
                              1928 Not awarded
          1929 Frank B. Kellogg (USA) for the Kellogg-Briand 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
     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
                              1941 Not awarded
                              1942 Not awarded
                              1943 Not awarded
   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
   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 been assassinated. See the Nobel e-museum article.
     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 (USA) 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 (France) 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) then future Prime Minister of
      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.
                   League of Red Cross Societies, Geneva.
      1964 Martin Luther King Jr (USA) Leader of the Southern Christian
             Leadership Conference, campaigner for civil rights.
    1965 United Nation's International Children's Education Fund (UNICEF)
                              1966 Not awarded
                                    1967
     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 Centre.
       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
     Lê Ðức Thọ (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.
             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. At 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 (Tibet). for his consistent
    resistance to the use of violence in his people's struggle to regain
                               their freedom.
1990 President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Михаи́л Серге́евич
Горбачёв) (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 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 ANC President Nelson Mandela (South Africa) and 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 (ياسر عرفات) (Palestine), Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres (שמעון פרס) (Israel) and Prime Minister Yitzhak
 Rabin (יצחק רבין) (Israel) "for their efforts to create peace in the
                                Middle East"
   1995 Joseph 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 Filipe 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
    (USA) "for their work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel
                                   mines"
    1998 John Hume and David Trimble (both Northern Ireland, UK) "Awarded
      for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in
                              Northern Ireland"
      1999 Médecins Sans Frontières (France). "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 (شيرين عبادي), (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 (محمد البرادعي) (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"
2006 Muhammad Yunus (মুহাম্মদ ইউনুস), (Bangladesh) and Grameen Bank
(গ্রামীণ ব্যাংক), (Bangladesh) "for advancing economic and social
   opportunities for the poor, especially women, through their pioneering
                              microcredit work"

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