Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize (where Nobel is pronounced with the stress on the latter syllable) is one of five Nobel Prizes bequested by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. According to the will of Alfred Nobel the 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".

Related Topics:
Nobel Prize - Swedish - Alfred Nobel - Peace

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The Peace Prize is awarded annually in Oslo, the capital of Norway, unlike the prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, which are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, whose members are chosen by the Norwegian Parliament, is appointed to select the laureate for the Peace Prize, and the prize is awarded by its chairman, currently Dr. Ole Danbolt Mjøs. 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 for Norwegian domestic policy. While Alfred Nobel never told anybody http://www.nobel.no/eng_com_nor.html why he didn't give a Swedish body the task of awarding the Peace Prize, one of the suggested reasons has been to prevent the manipulation of the selection process by foreign powers. Other suggestions point to the fact that the Norwegian Assembly (Storting) was the first national legislature to vote support for the international peace movement and Nobel's admiration of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, the Norwegian patriot and leading author at that time.

Related Topics:
Oslo - Capital - Norway - Physics - Chemistry - Medicine - Literature - Stockholm - Sweden - Norwegian Nobel Committee - Norwegian Parliament - Ole Danbolt Mjøs - Personal union - Storting - Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

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Nominations for the prize may be made by a broad array of prominent individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies, university professors, international judges, and special advisors to the prize committee. In some years as many as 199 nominations have been received. The nominations are kept secret by the committee which 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.http://www.nobel.no/eng_com_nom.html. Nominations from 1901 to 1951 have been released in a database. When the past nominations were released it was discovered that Adolf Hitler was once nominated in 1939, though the nomination was retracted in February of the same year.

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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, rather than upon the resolution of the issue. In this way, the Nobel Peace Prize differs from all the other Nobel prizes. 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, Yasser Arafat, Le Duc Tho, and Henry Kissinger were particularly controversial and criticized; the latter prompted two dissenting committee members to resign http://nobelprize.org/peace/articles/controversies/index.html. The Nobel Committee has also received criticism from right-wing groups who see their decisions as guided by an apparent left-wing bias.

Related Topics:
Theodore Roosevelt - Yasser Arafat - Le Duc Tho - Henry Kissinger

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In 2005, the Nobel Peace Center opened, to present the laureates, conflicts, and work for peace around the world.

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