The Inside Story of the Nobel Peace Prize
In this excerpt from The World’s Most Prestigious Prize: The Inside Story of the Nobel Peace Prize, former Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute Geir Lundestad traces the history of the Nobel Peace Prize from its modest beginnings over a hundred years ago to its status as a globally significant cultural event today.
On the first or second Friday of October, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, flanked by the secretary, approaches a microphone and announces who will receive this year’s Peace Prize. The Grand Hall at the Nobel Institute is full of journalists from all over the world. As soon as the laureate’s name is announced, leading politicians and journalists start commenting on the Nobel Committee’s decision. Some will say it was a good decision, others will wonder what the committee was thinking. However, what is striking is just how interested the world is in what the committee decides.
Why does the world care about the decision of a committee of five relatively unknown Norwegians? The international press does not often devote much time to Norway. The population of Norway is less than a thousandth of the population of Earth. We are on the periphery, far to the north, far from the central parts of the world. There are probably over 300 peace prizes in the world, depending somewhat on your definition of peace.
Yet, the Nobel Peace Prize has probably never been in a stronger position than it is today. The Oxford Dictionary of Contemporary History describes the Peace Prize as “the world’s most prestigious prize”. There have also never been more nominations for the Peace Prize: in 1904, the first year for which a full list of the nominees is available, 22 people were nominated for the prize; in 1991, this number had increased to 79. In 2016, there were 376 nominees. The figure increases almost every single year, and the number of media articles has skyrocketed. Every year in my 25 years as Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, it took me longer to go through the growing pile of cuttings from all over the world.
For a long time, primarily North American and Western European countries were interested in the prize. In recent decades, however, it has garnered attention from across the world, which reflects the simple fact that while until around 1960 the prize was usually a prize for individuals and organisations from North America and Western Europe, laureates in recent decades have come from many continents of the world. From 1990 to the present day, ten laureates have come from Asia, eight from Africa, five from Europe, four from North America, three from the Middle East and two from Latin America.
There have been many high-profile laureates in the last 25 years, which has likely increased people’s awareness of the prize, but at the same time, there have been many unknown recipients. I remember the prize from 1995, when almost none of the journalists present knew anything about Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences. In 2006, the same happened with Muhammad Yunus, not to mention the Grameen Bank; many of the journalists thought Grameen Bank was the name of a person receiving the prize alongside Yunus. Such prizes for relatively ordinary people are almost always popular in Norway; it is important that there are such laureates and that the committee does not give in to the temptation to always favour big, famous names. I actually think that the possibility of relative unknowns receiving the prize has also contributed to the status of the prize. We never know who will receive the prize. It was great that the relatively unknown Kailash Satyarthi was honoured in 2014 alongside the famous Malala Yousafzai. Once the journalists have sourced the relevant information, these laureates always have an important story to tell.
Most peace prizes imbue elements of both the past and future. An achievement must form the basis of the award, but the committee also hopes that the prize will contribute to new results in the future. This is not anything new either. Many of the very first prizes went to peace activists with a very limited influence on the politics of their time. This was the committee’s way of expressing that it hoped their ideals would be of great influence going forwards. Some people have argued that the committee should not award any prizes until the historical process, for example in the Middle East, is complete. But history has no end. It goes on and on.
Professor Gier Lundestad is a former Director of Norwegian Nobel Institute (1990–2014) and Adjunct Professor of International History, University of Oslo (1991–2014).
