Peace and Nobel Peace Prize

Peace and Nobel Peace Prize

brotee mukhopadhyay

President Obama has been awarded Nobel Prize for Peace this year “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

The honorable Nobel Committee of Sweden may have considered that President Obama has pledged to cause an end to the programs of persecutions in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. President Obama seems to be honest in his negotiation with Russia for gradual withdrawal of all nuclear weapons of the world. He has been insisting on other states which have nuclear weapons in their arsenal or who have been in the race to acquire the same. Still these are his attempts of honest desire only and we are yet to mark his performance and success after the high-sounding rhetoric for peace have been heard.

Secondly, as the President of America he has definite limitations. America is the single super power of the modern world and because of being so it has global responsibility. Parallel to this, America is infamous as a war-mongering country. America has established itself as the largest arms-exporting state. Invasion of Iraq and subsequent involvement in Afghanistan by the USA have made its position more complex. Political leaders of different regions have been striving for possessing weapons of destruction as a measure to defend them. They share the view that survival is assured if a state follows the concept of attack and defend. With all these on the background, therefore, President Osama’s mission for peace is tremendously difficult.

Judgment of the Swedish Nobel Committee in awarding Nobel Prizes for Peace on a few occasions has raised grave questions in the globe. Some of the recipients of this prestigious prize have records of activities against peace.

When Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973 everyone was surprised. This person played dangerous role for a long time in wider parts of the globe which include Vietnam, Cambodia, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Cyprus.

The 1978 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Menachem BeginMenachem Begin who was the 6th Prime Minister of Israel. He was once the chief of Irgun, a notorious militant Zionist group. Irgun was a terrorist organization and Mr. Begin had a role in the King David Hotel bombing in 1946. The 1978 Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Anwar SadatAnwar Sadat of Egypt for the Camp David Accords and he has refused to accept the honor at that time.

Yitzhak RabinYitzhak Rabin and Shimon PeresShimon Peres were selected alone with Yasser Arafat by the Swedish Nobel Committee in 1994. The first two persons did their best to develop Israel’s nuclear weapons. Rabin was out and out a warrior and left records of driving out the Palestinians from their homeland during 1948 war. Shimon Peres was the master behind the Qana Massacre.

It has been considered as a cruel joke that persons in the Nobel Committee have selected Israeli politicians again and again. Most of them are fit to be tried for crime against humanity and it is more so if the recent plundering of Gaza by Israel is taken into consideration.

President Jimmy CarterJimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He was awarded this prize for “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”. This is another piece of irony in practical sense of the term.

If we look at the result of 2007 it is again a riddle. Al GoreAl Gore of the USA has been awarded the most precious prize for Peace and it is for his contribution to the rise of public awareness on global warming. The issue of Global warming has long been debatable as many of the scientists do no more share its official explanation.

Methinks it is the best time to question if any prize should at all be awarded in the name of PEACE by the Swedish Nobel Committee or if the concept of PEACE should be associated with the name of Alfred Nobel. His invention of dynamite has always been used for acts of destruction and never for peace. He has earned fabulous sum of money from selling recipe of dynamite to America and this money he has fixed for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is undoubtedly a burden of more than a century to recollect the Alfred Nobel’s mandate that the Peace Prize 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.”