Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize was established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who left his fortune to fund five prizes. The will specified that the peace prize should be awarded by a committee of five persons elected by the Norwegian Storting (parliament).¹ The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901 to Frédéric Passy and Henry Dunant, co-founders of the International Committee of the Red Cross.² The prize has been awarded annually since then, with some years skipped (e.g., during World War II) when no suitable candidate was found.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee receives nominations from a wide range of qualified individuals, including members of national assemblies, governments, international courts, university professors, and previous laureates.³ Nominations are confidential for 50 years, but the committee publishes a shortlist each year. The selection is based on the criteria in Nobel's will, and the committee often interprets "peace" broadly, including human rights, disarmament, and conflict resolution.⁴ The prize is announced in October and awarded on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

Over the years, the prize has been awarded to figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), Mother Teresa (1979), and Nelson Mandela (1993).⁵ It has also been given to organizations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1954, 1981) and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (1997).⁶ Controversies have arisen, such as the 1973 award to Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ (who declined), and the 2009 award to Barack Obama early in his presidency, which was criticized as premature.

Some lesser-known facts include: the prize has been awarded to organizations more than 30 times, and to individuals posthumously only once (Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961). The Nobel Peace Prize is the only Nobel Prize not awarded in Stockholm; the ceremony takes place in Oslo City Hall. The committee's secretariat is the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which also runs a library and research center. In 2019, the prize went to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for his peace deal with Eritrea, a relatively obscure conflict that was resolved after decades of stalemate.⁷ The prize has also been awarded to individuals who were in prison at the time, such as Aung San Suu Kyi (1991) and Liu Xiaobo (2010), the latter being the first Chinese citizen to receive it.

Norwegian Nobel Committee

A five-member committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament to select the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Alfred Nobel

Swedish chemist and inventor of dynamite, whose will established the Nobel Prizes.

Storting

The Norwegian parliament, which appoints the Nobel Committee.