The Nobel Peace Prize

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Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) invented dynamite and other explosives. Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer and armaments manufacturer who made an enormous fortune selling explosives and heavy munitions (cannons and explosive projectiles.)  Concerned about his legacy, he decided to use his fortune for the betterment of humanity.

In his will he created five annual prizes: physical science, chemistry, medicine, literature and the Big Kahuna: Peace

From Wiki:

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 nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

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The Norwegian Parliament appoints the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the Laureate for the Peace Prize. The Committee chairman, currently Thorbjørn Jagland, presents the Prize to the laureate at the award ceremony. 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.[5] 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.

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The statutes of the Nobel Foundation specify categories of individuals who are eligible to make nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.[6] These are;

* Members of national assemblies and governments and members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,
* Members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Court of Justice at the Hague,
* Members of Institut de Droit International,
* University professors of history, political science, philosophy, law and theology, university presidents and directors of peace research international affairs institutes,
* Former recipients, including board members of organisations that have previously won the prize,
* Present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, and
* Former permanent advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

Nominations must usually be submitted to the Committee by February 1 of the year in question. Nominations by committee members can be submitted up to the date of the first Committee meeting after this deadline.

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Nominations are considered by the Nobel Committee at a meeting where a short list of candidates for further review is created. This short list is then considered by permanant advisers to the Nobel institute, which consists Institute’s Director and Research Director and a small numbers of Norwegian academics with expertise in subject areas relating to the prize. Advisers usually have some months to complete reports, which are then considered by the Committee to select the laureate. The Committee seeks to achieve a unanimous decision, but this is not always possible.

Wiki also says that this year there were a record 205 nominations. That means the Barack Obama was considered more worthy than 204 other candidates.

The Nobel Peace Prize is supposed to be unaffected by politics or corruption.  It is supposed to go to:

“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.”

This year’s award clearly violates the terms of Nobel’s will. According to the Citation the Committee selected Obama for his “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples” in his outreach to the Muslim world and efforts to end nuclear proliferation.”

From the New York Fishwrapper:

In Oslo, Thorbjørn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and a former prime minister of Norway, explained that Obama’s early international diplomacy efforts helped him beat out more than 200 other nominees to become the third sitting U.S. president to win the award. The sitting presidents to win the prize were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002.

“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,” Jagland said. “We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future, but for what he has done in the previous year. We would hope this will enhance what he is trying to do.”

The problem is he hasn’t done anything except make some speeches. But we already knew that last year.

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