Det Norske Nobelinstitutts Skriftserie The Norwegian Nobel Institute Series

Peter van den Dungen:

The Nobel Peace Prize and the Global Proliferation of Peace Prizes in the 20th

Century

Vol. 1 - No. 6 Oslo, 2000

2 2

Peter van den Dungen:

The Nobel Peace Prize and the Global Proliferation of Peace Prizes in the 20th Century

Det Norske Nobelinstitutts Skriftserie The Norwegian Nobel Institute Series

Vol. 1 – No. 6

2

Table of Contents:

Introduction.......................................................................................................................5

The first awards for peace in modern times...................................................................8

The growth of peace awards in the 20th century ..........................................................11

(1) Pre-1914 ............................................................................................................... 11

(2) Inter-war ............................................................................................................... 12

(3) Post-1945.............................................................................................................. 16

Nature of organisations awarding peace prizes ...........................................................19

(1) Private awards ...................................................................................................... 19

(2) Official awards ..................................................................................................... 22

(3) International awards ............................................................................................. 27

The unique nature of the Nobel Peace Prize ................................................................31

Towards a pantheon of peace prizes? ...........................................................................35

The Nobel Peace Prize and other awards for peace.....................................................39

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Introduction

This paper is part of a wider project that aims to provide a comprehensive history and

sociology of awards for peace in the course of the 20th century. A substantial, but still

somewhat preliminary part of the project is the compilation of an inventory of such

awards. No such inventory exists, certainly not in published form. The only listings of

peace awards in published form are the sections devoted to this subject in general

directories of ‘Awards, Honors, and Prizes’, to quote the title of the most extensive

reference work available.1 These substantial works are evidence, first of all, of the

enormous number and variety of awards which exist in all areas of human life, and thus of

the apparent importance of awards in modern society. Secondly, these works also

demonstrate the problematic nature of ‘peace’ as a subject category since many awards

which can be considered to fall within this area are, instead, categorised under separate

headings such as ‘brotherhood’, ‘freedom and justice’, ‘human rights’, ‘humanitarianism’,

‘public affairs’, ‘international law’, ‘European unity’, ‘foreign relations’, ‘international

relations’. A third observation which can be made is that the coverage of peace awards,

however defined, in general awards directories is far from complete.

Under the heading ‘World peace’, Siegman identified 45 awards given by 43

organisations in the US and Canada; she also listed 27 awards given by 25 international

and foreign organisations.2 Her total of 72 awards3 compares very favourably with awards

for ‘International Relations’ contained in a similar reference work published a decade

earlier. The World Dictionary of Awards and Prizes4 listed 24 awards, a mere third of the

Siegman total. Outside the US, a comprehensive listing of awards, including peace

awards, is that published in the German annual, Der Fischer Weltalmanach.5 The most

recent volume available, for the year 2000, contains a section entitled ‘Preise für Frieden

und Verständigung, gesamtschöpferische Leistungen, Natur- und Umweltschutz,

Landschafts- und Denkmalpflege’ (columns 1343-1350). It identifies some 37 prizes,

1 See G. Siegman (ed.), Awards, Honors and Prizes. Detroit: Gale Research Comp., 8th ed., 1989; G. Siegman (ed.), World of Winners. Detroit: Gale Research Comp., 1992. 2 Siegman, o.c., 1989, Vol. 1, Subject Index, pp. 1309-10, and Vol. 2, Subject Index, pp. 790-1. 3 In a Supplement volume published in 1990, she lists an additional five ‘world peace’ awards. 4 London: Europa Publ., 1979, Subject Index, p. 347. 5 Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999.

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most of them German ones. However, as the section title indicates, not all of them are

peace prizes.6

Information available in the library of the Norwegian Nobel Institute – an obvious

source – suggests that the number of peace awards is several times that which would be

obtained by adding up all the relevant awards listed in Siegman. In addition to the

reference works mentioned, the sources for this study consist largely of two components.

Firstly, materials produced by the prize awarding organisations. These materials range

from the sumptuous and detailed to concise press statements. Much of this material has

been collected over the years in the Library of the Institute and the author is greatly

indebted to the Head Librarian, Anne C. Kjelling, for sharing this information with him

over a period stretching back more than ten years. Secondly, the periodical press,

especially journals of organisations making awards, and of the peace movement in

general, frequently contain information about prizes and details of laureates. There are

two subsidiary sources: occasional references in published histories of the peace idea and

the peace movement, and research in archives and correspondence by the present author.

We shall start by making some observations on the origins of peace awards, and

drawing a distinction between institutionalised and occasional awards. As regards peace

prizes in the 20th century, it will be convenient to trace their growth by dividing the

century in three periods, viz., pre-1914, inter-war, and post-1945. For the latter period, we

shall categorise peace awards on the basis of the nature of the sponsoring organisation.

Whether, from the point of view of the growth of peace awards, the end of the

Cold War constitutes a significant event, is an open question. So far, it seems that the

impact of the end of the Cold War on the phenomenon of peace awards has been limited,

with some awards disappearing and some new ones taking their place. Among the former

one can mention those awards bestowed, for instance, by the German Democratic

Republic. Among the latter is the Jan Masaryk Commemorative Medal ‘Pro Amicitia

Inter Naciones’, first awarded to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Prague in 1999.

Almost a decade earlier, in January 1990 (on the 20th anniversary of the death of Jan

6 A certain conceptual confusion – manifesting itself in the use of too expansive an interpretation of the notion of ‘Human rights’ – is evident in the listing of ‘Human Rights Awards 1998’ in Human Rights Monitor, No. 44, 1998, p. 60. Of the seventeen prizes included, ten are human rights prizes so called or can clearly be described as such. While the four ‘peace’ prizes, including the Nobel Peace Prize and the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education, could be classified as human rights prizes, this is more controversial for the remaining prizes included, viz. the Nobel Prize in Economics, the UN’s Dag Hammarskjöld Medals, and the UNEP’s Sasakawa Prize for the Environment. The Monitor is published by the Geneva-based International Service for Human Rights organisation.

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Palach), the Paris-based international committee for Charter 77 was able to award its 11th

annual Jan Palach Award for Human Rights for the first time in Prague. The leading

peace award in the Communist world, the Soviet Union’s International Lenin Peace

Prize, has gone.7 One obvious consequence has been a certain loss of saliency,

particularly for western awards to candidates in the former Soviet bloc. Such awards were

often condemned by the official media in the communist bloc as part of the western cold

war strategy. The inability of laureates to travel abroad and receive the prize in person

also often made the headlines. Lastly, another consequence of the end of the Cold War

has been the emergence of new conflict zones in parts of Eastern Europe and the former

Soviet Union – and the coming to the fore of individuals and organisations, both from

within the regions concerned and from outside, as candidates for existing peace prizes.

One example is the award of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of

Thought for 1993 to the Sarajevo newspaper Oslobodjenje; another is the award of the

same prize for 1998 to Ibrahim Rugova, then the leader of the Kosovo Albanians for his

peaceful opposition to Serbian rule.8

Following a survey of the growth of peace prizes, and as a prelude to a

consideration of their relationship to the Nobel Peace Prize, the features that make it

unique among awards for peace will be considered. We shall also offer some reflections

on the possibility of ranking other awards for peace. Lastly, the question of the meaning

and significance of peace prizes will be addressed. The Nobel Peace Prize can be seen as

the crystallisation of a process which started early in the 19th century through peace essay

contests and which culminated towards the end of the 20th century in the global

institutionalisation of peace awards. The Nobel Peace Prize stands exactly mid-way in

this period when peace awards evolved from ad hoc competitions to more formal, regular

and institutionalised, ones. Beales sums it up very well in his chapter surveying the

activities and development of the peace movement in the closing decade of the 19th

century: ‘The Prize Essay Competitions … so beloved of the older Peace Movement,

were now elevated to heights of permanence and universal respect in the Nobel Peace

Prize’.9

7 The Prize was perhaps awarded for the last time in 1990 to Nelson Mandela. Cf. Peace Courier, No. 6, 1990, p. 13. Since then, the dissolution of the Soviet Union seems to have entailed also that of the Prize. 8 See EP [European Parliament] News, June 1999, p. 1. 9 A. C. F. Beales, The History of Peace. London: G. Bell, 1931, pp. 241-2.

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The first awards for peace in modern times

When Nobel founded his awards, the peace prize was the first award of a permanent and

regular nature in this field (see below, however, for the one exception, which he is

unlikely to have known about). Awards for peace were nothing new at the end of the 19th

century, but up to then they had been made on an ad hoc basis only. They were invariably

tied to essay competitions which proved to be a popular device of the various peace

societies which were first established in the US, Britain, and in continental Europe in the

aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. Such contests were used to stimulate discussion of the

ways and means by which war could be eliminated and to draw ever larger groups of

people into the peace movement.10 Even before this, the idea had suggested itself to Henri

de Saint-Simon in a peculiar form: in a book that in 1813 he sent to Napoleon and other

authorities, he proposed that Napoleon organise a prize contest to elicit the best plan for

the reorganisation of European society. The reward was to be 25 million francs, and the

author went on to specify the members of the jury, as well as a number of features which

the plan had to incorporate.11 Possibly the first peace essay competition ever was

organised by the French Academy in 1766-67. It followed an anonymous donation that

allowed the Academy to award a gold medal to the person who, in its opinion, had

submitted the best treatise on the following subject, ‘To show the advantages of peace, to

inspire horror for the ravages of war, and to invite all nations to unite in order to

safeguard the general peace’. The two winning essays, by Jean-François de la Harpe and

G.H. Gaillard were published in 1767.12 They stand at the beginning of a small library

comprised of peace prize essays since a good many of those which were successful in the

competitions organised by the 19th century peace movement were published. The ‘essay’

sometimes amounted to a sizeable, book-length manuscript.

The gradual institutionalisation of peace prizes in the 20th century has not meant

the disappearance of the older, ad hoc, peace award. The rich tradition and harvest (in

quantitative as well as qualitative terms, despite Devere Allen’s comments, cf. below) of 10 For an overview of the most important contests, see the chapter entitled ‘Die Friedensvereine und ihre Preisausschreiben’ in Jacob ter Meulen, Der Gedanke der Internationalen Organisation in seiner Entwicklung. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, Vol. 2, 1929, pp. 237-67 as well as the section entitled ‘William Ladd und das Preisausschreiben der American Peace Society’, pp. 273-301 in ibid.; see also the various prize competitions and essays presented in Vol. 3, 1940, pp. 71-113; Beales, o.c., passim; W. H. van der Linden, The International Peace Movement, 1815-1874. Amsterdam: Tilleul Publ., 1987, passim. 11 Cf. van der Linden, o.c., p. 112. 12 For details, see the chapter entitled ‘Die Preisfrage vom Jahre 1766 und die Schriften von De la Harpe und Gaillard’ in ter Meulen, o.c., Vol. 1, pp. 259-62.

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the 19th century has been continued throughout the 20th century. In fact, several of those

ad hoc competitions have generated popular interest and participation on a scale that has

never been matched by the Nobel Peace Prize, let alone its ‘rivals’. This can partly be

explained by the pro-active and ‘democratic’ format of ad hoc competitions which

encourages participation on a large scale. In order to be considered for an established

prize, on the other hand, an individual normally has to be nominated (implying a certain

passivity; individuals wishing to promote their own candidature may have to do so

surreptitiously). Established prizes typically also restrict those who can nominate to

certain categories. Both factors militate against broad and active participation. Another

reason for the popularity of some ad hoc competitions has been the size of the award.

Lastly, the challenging nature of the competition topic has acted as a spur, too. This is

shown by the fact that on occasion many people have participated in a contest, even

though no monetary or other material awards were involved.

One kind of ad hoc award deserves singling out since it is closely linked to

permanent awards. This is the case when the former is the direct result of dissatisfaction

with the latter. In practice, it seems that decisions of only the Norwegian Nobel

Committee have occasionally resulted in the bestowing of ad hoc awards to those who, in

the opinion of their organisers, possessed superior claims to the candidate actually

chosen. The Peace Prize of the Norwegian People is perhaps the best-known of such ad

hoc prizes. It has been awarded on at least two occasions – to Helder Camara in the year

when the Nobel prize went to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho (1973), and to Betty

Williams and Mairead Corrigan (1976). The following year they were also awarded the

reserved Nobel peace prize for 1976. The first such challenge to the Nobel Peace Prize

seems to have been mounted not in Norway but in the US in the 1930s. The World Peace

Prize Award Campaign was initiated in 1936 by a group of young people who ‘were

puzzled that the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to Mme. Schwimmer twenty years

ago nor since’.13 They levelled strong criticism at the Nobel Committee for this

dereliction of duty, as they saw it, and went on to target the undemocratic nature of the

Committee. The statement concluded, ‘In a way we hope that our campaign will serve as

a challenge to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, but our main desire is that we shall have

established a precedent whereby the people of the world shall be encouraged to reward 13 Cf. ‘Some Facts About the World Peace Prize Award Campaign’, mimeo, p. 1, in the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection, New York Public Library. Schwimmer had been nominated in 1917, and was to be nominated again in 1948.

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their own heroes’. The campaign attracted the support of many celebrities world-wide,

including Nobel laureates Albert Einstein,14 Selma Lagerlöf, and Romain Rolland. The

prize of US $ 8,500 was awarded to Rosika Schwimmer on her 60th birthday in September

1937 and during a ceremony in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel later that year.

Not only criticism but also admiration of the Nobel Peace Prize has resulted in the

creation of ad hoc awards. The best-known instance, and undoubtedly the most

spectacular of all ad hoc awards, is the American Peace Award. This was the idea of the

Philadelphia publisher and philanthropist Edward W. Bok who provided the award money

of US $ 100,000. The award, announced in 1923, was offered for the ‘best practical plan

by which the US may co-operate with other nations to achieve and preserve the peace of

the world’.15 Over a quarter of a million US citizens requested details of the award;

almost 10% followed this up and submitted their essay. The winning plan – which

advocated US membership of the Permanent Court of International Justice and closer co-

operation with the League of Nations – then became the subject of a national referendum.

Over 600,000 ballots were received, the vast majority endorsing the plan. Just as the

Nobel Peace Prize had inspired Bok to launch his American Peace Award, so the success

of the latter in mobilising large numbers of people for the peace idea in turn sparked off

similar, although more modest, competitions.

The largest and most interesting of these were the European Peace Prizes funded

by the American businessman and philanthropist Edward A. Filene. In 1924 he

established parallel peace competitions in France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy,

endowing the competition in each country with $ 10,000 prize money. Special committees

were created in each country charged with the organisation and judging of the

competition. Nearly 4,700 British and 5,300 French citizens submitted plans ‘for the

restoration of peace and prosperity’ in their country and in Europe as a whole; altogether

more than 15,000 plans were submitted by citizens of the four countries concerned. The 14 Einstein had a few years before written to a correspondent, ‘I believe good old Nobel would turn in his grave were he to see the list of those who, over his name, have been praised and rewarded for their efforts in behalf of peace’. Letter of 1 Sept. 1935 re Ossietzky in Otto Nathan & Heinz Norden (eds.), Einstein on Peace. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960, pp. 265-6. Rosika Schwimmer herself had written a few years before, ‘If the dead really turn in their graves whenever their wills are carried out contrary to their intentions, poor Alfred Nobel … is not having a very restful time.’ ‘The Nobel Peace Prize,’ pp. 20-22 in The World Tomorrow, January 1932, at p. 20. 15 Edward W. Bok, ‘How the American Peace Award came to be’, pp. VII-XVI in Esther Everett Lape (ed.), Ways to Peace: Twenty Plans Selected from the Most Representative of Those Submitted to The American Peace Award (etc.). New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1924; Charles DeBenedetti, ‘The $ 100,000 American Peace Award of 1924’, pp. 224-49 in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 98, April 1974.

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generous benefactor declared himself well satisfied with the intensity of the competition

and the quality of the practical schemes received.16

The growth of peace awards in the 20th century

(1) Pre-1914

For a first orientation concerning the growth of peace prizes in the 20th century, it is

useful to consult some of the main reference works produced by the 20th century

chroniclers of the peace movement. Their works, and what they have to say about our

subject, can be regarded as fairly reliable indicators concerning its status and evolution.

The most comprehensive survey of the peace movement of the pre-1914 period, Alfred H.

Fried’s Handbuch der Friedensbewegung, contains no separate entry for peace awards.

Both the first edition of the Handbuch17 and the second edition18 refer to the Nobel Peace

Prize only. An entry called ‘Peace prize’ (or any of its possible variations) is not to be

found in the subject indexes. It seems that Fried’s works accurately reflect the reality of

the situation and that in the period before World War I there existed only the Nobel Peace

Prize as an annual prize. However, as already hinted at earlier, this is not quite accurate

since this prize was not alone and, what is more, had a predecessor (in the sense of an

institutionalised, annual award). This is the Sumner Prize of Harvard University, first

given in 1885 and still awarded today. Upon his death in 1874, Charles Sumner, leading

US senator and supporter of the peace movement, left US $ 1,000 in his will to his alma

mater for the creation of a prize. It is offered annually ‘for the best dissertation … dealing

with any means or measures tending toward the prevention of war and the establishment

of universal peace’.19 Since the prize will not be awarded to any work that in the opinion

of the judges is not worthy of publication, the prize has not been awarded every year. For

instance, in the period 1926 to 1987, no award was given on 19 occasions, in addition to

the period 1940-45. It is striking that no awards were given in 10 out of the 15 years in the

period 1965-80. Was this perhaps a consequence of students (and their professors?)

16 See his introduction to the following comprehensive account: Die Besten Arbeiten der Europäischen Friedenspreise. Berlin: Deutscher Friedens-Preis Sekretariat, 1924, pp. 7-9, or Concours Européen de la Paix. Paris: Comité d’Action pour la S.D.N., 1924, pp. 7-9. 17 Wien & Leipzig: Verlag der Oesterreichischen Friedensgesellschaft, 1905. 18 Berlin & Leipzig: Verlag der ‘Friedens-Warte’, 1911-1913. 19 Cf. Harvard University, Prizes 1988-89. Cambridge: Harvard University, Office of the Secretary of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, p. 56. (The University has stopped publishing this guidebook.)

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having abandoned their studies for the streets, protesting the war in Vietnam? Irwin

Abrams shared the award in 1937-38; a later Sumner Prize Winner is Henry Kissinger

(1953-54). One of the winners in the 1990s was Daniel Goldhagen for his dissertation

entitled The Nazi Executioners: A Study of Their Behavior and the Causation of

Genocide.20 The prize money currently is about US $ 8,000, making the Sumner Prize the

most profitable of all student prizes (with one exception, of recent vintage - see below).

Although Fried mentions Sumner, he was apparently not aware of the prize instituted by

and named after him.

(2) Inter-war

The slow institutionalisation of peace awards in the inter-war period can be followed

through a reference work that was published in several editions and translations between

1924 and 1937. Even though far less ambitious and comprehensive than Fried’s work,

Anna T. Nilsson’s A.B.C. of the Peace Movement: Dates and Facts is a useful

compendium.21 It is all the more suitable for our purposes since it contains in its later

editions a section entitled ‘Peace prizes’ and goes on to identify them as follows: ‘Nobel,

Wilson, Wateler, Grotius’. In the early editions of her compendium – it was first

published in 1924 in Malmö in Swedish – including the English version published in

1931, the section is still entitled ‘The Nobel Peace Prize’, and no other awards are

referred to. In the second Swedish edition, published in Stockholm in 1934 (and in

subsequent translations, such as a German one, published in 1936), the section is re-titled

to take into account the other prizes mentioned. The bulk of the section is devoted to a

listing of the Nobel peace laureates; less than one page is given over to the three other

prizes mentioned. We now know that of these three new prizes, only the Wateler prize has

stayed the course. It may well be that Nilsson had been alerted to these new prizes

through an article in the leading peace movement journal in Europe, Die Friedens-Warte.

In 1932, it reported on two new ‘large’ peace prizes, the Wilson and Wateler ones.22 In

20 This seems to have been an inappropriate choice, both in terms of the work’s subject matter and especially as regards its scholarship. One authority has called the work unhistorical, polemical, pretentious and ‘a potpourri of half-truths and assertions.’ Cf. Fritz Stern, ‘The Past Distorted: The Goldhagen Controversy’, pp. 272-88 in his Einstein’s German World. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 2000. 21 Geneva: The International League of Youth, Geneva Section, 1931. 22 Die Friedens-Warte, ‘Zwei Friedenspreise’, Vol. 32, 1932, p. 215.

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view of the rarity of peace awards in the inter-war period, we shall now briefly introduce

each of them.

The Woodrow Wilson Prize (also called Woodrow Wilson Peace Prize, and

Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Service) was first awarded in 1924 to Lord

Cecil; it was awarded on a further fifteen occasions, the last time in 1963 to Raymond B.

Fosdick.23 According to Cecil, Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain ‘was rather averse

to my acceptance of the Wilson Peace Prize’. However, Cecil was determined to accept

the award, making it clear that he was prepared to resign from the cabinet if that was the

price he had to pay.24 The prize was instituted by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation,

established in 1920 in New York by 23 women, specifically to make awards to

individuals or groups ‘rendering meritorious service to democracy, public welfare, liberal

thought or peace through justice’ – i.e., causes to which the American president had

devoted his life. It seems that, from a chronological point of view, the award of the Nobel

Peace Prize to Wilson in 1920 (for the previous year) could not have provided the

inspiration for the creation of the Woodrow Wilson Prize although possible

disappointment on the part of his supporters over the non-award of the Nobel prize to him

in 1918 or 1919 (he was nominated in both years) might have played a role.25 Only one

organisation ever received the prize – the League of Nations, on the occasion of its tenth

anniversary (1929). The Foundation had initially aimed to create an endowment of US $ 1

million; it succeeded in raising 87% of that sum.26 The prize money for each of the four

earliest awards (1924-1929) was US $ 25,000. It seems that the later awards were

honorific only. The Foundation was liquidated in 1963/64. Thirty years later, the

Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, DC honoured Brent Scowcroft with its first

Woodrow Wilson Statesmanship Award (1993) which is given infrequently.

23 A list of laureates is given in The Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Two Year Report & Forty Years in Retrospect. Report for the Years 1961-63, p. 67. 24 Lord Cecil, All the Way. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1949, pp. 184-5. He received the prize at the hands of F.D. Roosevelt. By contrast, the following year, Stresemann refused to accept the same prize on the ground that acceptance of ‘a prize by a country which had been one of Germany’s enemies in the war could only harm him’. Cf. Gottfried Niedhart, ‘Gustav Stresemann’, pp. 183-92 in Karl Holl & Anne C. Kjelling (eds.), The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994, at p. 188. In his address, entitled ‘President Wilson and Peace’, accepting the Award, Cecil said, ‘I can very truly and honestly say that there is no honour which I should more value in the world than this’. Cf. Viscount Cecil, The Way of Peace: Essays and Addresses. London: Philip Allan, 1928, p. 233. 25 Asle Sveen reports on the discussion in the Norwegian Nobel Committee concerning Wilson’s controversial candidacy in his paper, “The Nobel Peace Prize: some aspects of the decision-making process, 1919-31”, Oslo, The Norwegian Nobel Institute Series, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2000, pp. 10-13. 26 Cf. Friedens-Warte, o.c.

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The Wateler Peace Prize deserves special mention since it is, after the Nobel

Peace Prize, the oldest existing annual and general peace award. (It is interesting to note

that both prizes, established by private individuals, are awarded in small countries that

traditionally have been neutral and internationalist in their foreign policy.) The prize was

first awarded in 1931 to Sir Eric Drummond, the League of Nations’ first Secretary-

General. It owes its origins to the Dutch banker J.G.D. Wateler who in his testament,

drawn up in 1916, bequeathed his considerable fortune to the Dutch State under the

proviso that the annual revenue accruing from it should be used for the awarding of a

yearly prize to private persons or institutions, alternately Dutch and foreign, who had

done the most ‘for the promotion of the peace idea or contributed to the discovery of

means which more and more will eventually render war impossible’. The selection of the

prize-winner was to be made by the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament, based on a

recommendation of two candidates by the Government. However, following Wateler’s

death in 1927, the Government rejected his legacy and, in accordance with the

testamentary dispositions, the Board of the Carnegie Foundation assumed all

responsibilities for the awarding of the prize.27 In view of the commotion caused by the

award in 1936 of the Nobel Peace Prize (for 1935) to Carl von Ossietzky and the ensuing

changes in the constitutional composition of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, it is

interesting to note that almost ten years previously the Dutch Government’s rejection of

the legacy was partly based on its view that the awards should not be imbued with

political influence, either national or international. Another factor informing the decision

to reject the legacy was that the testator himself had indicated an alternative body to

receive and administer the legacy in case the Government was to reject it. The

Government held that the Carnegie Foundation was a more appropriate organisation.28 It

is a matter of regret that the Wateler archive is not open to the public. This is all the more

unfortunate given the absence of any kind of ‘official’ history and even of a single article

or study about the Prize.

The Grotius Medal was instituted by the Dutch League of Nations and Peace

Association in 1925, the tercentenary of the publication of Grotius’s De Jure Belli ac

Pacis. The gold medal could be awarded annually to, at most, two persons who had 27 A. Lysen, History of the Carnegie Foundation and of the Peace Palace at The Hague. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1934, pp. 162-4, ‘The Wateler Fund’; Arthur Eyffinger, The Peace Palace: Residence for Justice - Domicile of Learning. The Hague: Carnegie Foundation, 1988, pp. 116-7, ‘The Wateler Peace Fund’. 28 See the records of the parliamentary debates on this matter: Bijlagen van het Verslag der Handelingen van de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 1927-1928, 310 (1-3) & 310 (4-5).

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distinguished themselves in connection with either the League of Nations, or international

law, or the peace movement, or a study concerning Grotius. In 1925, gold medals were

awarded to Briand and Undén, the foreign ministers of France and Sweden, respectively

(countries Grotius had been closely associated with); a further eight bronze medals were

also awarded that year.29 In 1933, the centenary of the birth of Nobel, the gold medal was

awarded to the Norwegian Nobel Institute for its support of the study of the peace

movement.30 The Grotius Medal was awarded for the last time in 1935; altogether only

six gold medals and 18 bronze medals were distributed. Whereas ten inaugural awards

were made, only a further fourteen awards were made over the next decade. Among the

recipients of the bronze medal were Drummond and Kellogg (1929), Cecil and Nansen

(1930), and Lange (1932).

The American peace activist and publicist, Devere Allen, did not refer to the

Wilson or Grotius awards (the Wateler prize had not yet been fully established) in the

section entitled ‘Peace by Prizes’ in his The Fight for Peace.31 It mainly dealt with

‘Prizes, for peace essays’, as the index entry makes clear. Both 19th and 20th century

prizes of this nature were briefly discussed. Of the annual and permanent awards, Allen

only mentioned the Sumner and Nobel prizes. Of the latter, Allen was fairly critical since

he commented, ‘A quarter of a century has passed since the Nobel Peace Prize provided

an opportunity for gambling, should anyone care to do it, more ruled by sheer chance than

any race course in the world. Some of its winners have been celebrated for their

militarism. There have been deserved awards … but … few have been more than fair-

weather pacifists and some have been notorious apologists for peace-via-war’ (pp. 241-2;

he illustrated this by listing the four US laureates, the award to Kellogg having been made

after the manuscript was completed. See also his comments on the Kellogg pact, p. 187).

29 See H. Ch. G. J. van der Mandere, ‘Commémoration du “De Iure Belli Ac Pacis” de Grotius en 1925’, pp. 43-76 in Grotius: Annuaire international pour l’année 1926. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1926, at pp. 45-6. From 1931 until 1939, the annual contained a small section entitled ‘Dutch grants and prizes for peace and international law’. In addition to news about the Wateler Peace Prize and the Grotius Medal, it also reported on some other legacies for peace. They mainly concern essay prize competitions and scholarships for students at The Hague Academy of International Law. See also Statuten, Geschiedenis, Samenstelling, Propaganda, Literatuur van de Vereeniging voor Volkenbond en Vrede. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1930, pp. 37, 69-70. 30 Øivind Stenersen’s paper, “The Nobel Peace Prize: some aspects of the decision-making process, 1932-39” (Oslo, The Norwegian Nobel Institute Series, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2000, p. 10), provides more detail about this event that was unprecedented. The Balzan Prize for Humanity, Peace and Brotherhood among Peoples was awarded to the Nobel Foundation in 1961. 31 New York: Macmillan, 1930, pp. 239-44.

15

Allen briefly discussed some of the major peace essay competitions of the post-World

War I period, and commented: ‘As a means of advertising peace in a vague and hazy way

to the general public, such prizes have a distinctly practical use. … As a technique of

finding practical approaches to peace, however, they amount substantially to zero’ (p.

242).

From the few published contemporary sources available, it seems that in the

period leading up to the Second World War, the number of regular (i.e. permanent or

institutionalised) annual peace awards could still be counted on the fingers of one hand.

By comparison, developments in the second half of the century can be described as

dramatic.

(3) Post-1945

Even though many peace prizes were instituted from the 1950s onwards, knowledge about

them is apparently not widespread. Alternatively, they might have been held in low

esteem and therefore not worth bothering with. A former US diplomat, John Bovey, in

1975 published an article entitled ‘Peace and its Prizes’.32 The title raises expectations

that a number of different peace awards are the subject of his study. This is, however, not

the case since it only refers to the Nobel awards (that the author, who is critical of them, is

not well informed is illustrated by his comment on the first award: ‘The founder of the

Red Cross had to share laurels with an obscure French parliamentarian’, p. 78). The

traditional neglect of peace awards, other than the Nobel Peace Prize, in the general

literature on peace is demonstrated by the extreme paucity of documentation or discussion

concerning this subject (with the exception, of course, of the documentation provided by

the prize-awarding bodies themselves). One of the very few general publications on peace

which, inter alia, pays attention to different peace awards is Peace: A Dream Unfolding, a

kind of coffee-table volume for the peace movement published in San Francisco in

198633. It introduced eight different awards in a section entitled ‘Honoured are the

Peacemakers’ (pp. 240-3). Almost half the available space is taken up by the Nobel Peace

Prize whose laureates are all listed. Six of the awards are North American, the remaining

award being the UNESCO Peace Education Prize.

32 Studia Diplomatica, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1975, pp. 75-88. 33 Ed. by Penney Kome and Patrick Crean, and published by Sierra Club Books.

16

One of the most extensive published listings of peace awards (which, however,

reports on only a fraction of them) is to be found in the German Jahrbuch Frieden, the

result of co-operation between German, Austrian and Swiss peace organisations, and

published from 1989 until 1996. It contains a section on peace prize laureates. The last

available annual reports on the 1995-6 laureates of twenty different prizes.34 Over half of

the prizes are awarded in Germany or Austria; four prizes are awarded by international

bodies (two by UNESCO, and one each by the European Parliament and the OSCE). The

Nobel Peace Prize and the Alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award), are also

included, as are an Argentine and a US award. (The previous yearbook, for 1996,

reporting on peace prize laureates for 1994-5, includes the Alternativer Norddeutscher

Bertha-von-Suttner Preis. The award, of DM 10,000, was given in 1995 to Nadja

Kleinholz, for her involvement in the North-German peace movement. This is, somewhat

surprisingly it may seem, the only peace prize named after the first woman laureate of the

Nobel Peace Prize. The same prize is not mentioned in the yearbook for any of the

previous years.)

It is not the intention of this paper to document the growth of peace awards in the

second half of the 20th century in any great detail.35 The increase in their number is such

that it is possible to talk of an exponential growth; certainly the term ‘proliferation’ which

is used in the title of this paper seems no exaggeration. What are some of the salient

features of this phenomenon, viz., the rapid increase in the number of peace awards in the

second half of the 20th century? What factors account for this? The context is, inevitably,

the horrors of World War II (especially the Holocaust and the dropping of the atomic

bombs), the dangers of the Cold War, and the onset of the nuclear era. War has become

increasingly total in the 20th century, affecting ever larger sections of the population, the

environment, etc. The concern for the avoidance of war and the preservation of peace has

grown accordingly. This concern has resulted in an enormously increased peace

‘infrastructure’; many peace awards have been created by elements of that infrastructure.

34 Jahrbuch Frieden 1997. Munich: Verlag C. Beck, 1996, pp. 265-9. 35 The author attempted a first survey of peace awards, both old and new, in a 68-page paper entitled ‘Peace Prizes in History’, presented in a panel on the Nobel Peace Prize during the Joint Annual Convention of the British International Studies Association and the International Studies Association, held in London, 28 March-1 April 1989. An article entitled ‘The prize of peace: Reflections on the awarding of efforts for peace’, drawing on this paper, was published in the Dutch peace research journal Transaktie in 1991 (Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 321-41, in Dutch). Lastly, some 150 prizes are identified and grouped according to the nature of the awarding body in ‘Peace Prizes’, an article in the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, ed. Lester R. Kurtz. San Diego: Academic Press, 1999, Vol. 2, pp. 795-808.

17

The growth in the number of peace prizes has taken place at a time when peacemaking

has undergone a process of specialisation and diversification. This is reflected in the

emergence of new terminology such as peace education, peace research, peacebuilding,

peacekeeping, peace leadership, conflict resolution. Other notions, foremost that of

nonviolence, have become more widely known and accepted. These developments are

mirrored in the field of peace awards, which are not only more numerous but more varied

– also in their naming – than before.

As regards the proliferation of peace awards in the second half of the 20th century,

we shall proceed with our investigation as follows. Following a summary of the growth of

peace prizes decade by decade and according to geographical origin, we shall address the

following related questions: what is the identity of the peace awarding bodies? How can

they be classified? What is significant about these categories?

Since this paper reports on work in progress, the analysis is based on a total of

(only) 133 peace awards (perhaps two to three times that number will eventually be

included, the precise number depending very much on the definition of peace used).

Taking the years when prizes were first awarded as our starting point (rather than the

years when the awarding bodies were created, or when they decided to institute a peace

award), the number of newly created peace prizes in each of the five decades of the

second half of the 20th century is as follows: 1950s – 7; 1960s – 6; 1970s – 18: 1980s –

73: 1990s – 29. According to geographical region, the distribution of prize awarding

bodies for the half century is as follows: North America – 52; Europe – 39; Australasia –

13; Africa – 2; Latin America – 1. The remaining prizes – 26 – were awarded by

international (governmental and non-governmental) bodies. The pattern of regional

distribution is reminiscent of the spread of institutions or activities in the wider field of

peace, such as the existence of peace research institutes, peace movements, and peace

museums. More generally, it is a reflection of the division between industrialised and

developing societies. It should be noted, however, that such categorisation might hide

pertinent information and create a somewhat misleading impression. For instance, the

figure denoting ‘peace prize activity’ for Africa would be double if two prizes would have

been categorised as African, rather than international. They are the Africa Prize for

Leadership for the sustainable end of hunger (which is also known as ‘Africa’s Peace

Prize’ and ‘Africa’s Nobel Prize’) – awarded by the New York-based international non-

governmental organisation The Hunger Project – and the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace

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Prize. The latter prize was instituted under the auspices of UNESCO but the prize is

financed by the eponymous Foundation for Peace in Yamoussoukro, Yvory Coast. The

reference to the global proliferation of peace awards can be interpreted in other than

strictly geographical terms. It is also meant to convey here the great diversity of peace

awarding bodies, as the following section will demonstrate.

Nature of organisations awarding peace prizes

Prize-awarding organisations can be grouped in one of the following three categories:

‘private’, official, and international.

(1) Private awards

The great majority of prizes, about 60%, are ‘private’ and are awarded by representative

groupings of civil society – including such organisations as churches, educational

institutions, the media, philanthropic and charitable organisations, trade unions, women

and youth groups, and of course movements and organisations involved in ‘development,

justice and peace’ work. The earliest awards mentioned above – Sumner, Nobel, Wilson,

Wateler, and Grotius – all belong to this category. It comprises three distinct sub-

categories, already evident in these historic awards. There is, firstly, the dedicated prize

awarding body, whose sole purpose is awarding prizes, represented by the Nobel and

Wilson Foundations. Such prize-awarding bodies are in the minority, in fact, their number

is very small. (Several of the most prestigious awards belong to this category.) The

International Balzan Foundation (1956) is a rare example. It is modelled on the Nobel

Foundation although its award for Humanity, Peace and Brotherhood among Peoples

is a ‘special’ award that is not given annually but requires an interval of at least three

years, unlike the Foundation’s other prizes. This prize has so far been awarded only six

times – the first one to the Nobel Foundation (1961), and most recently to the ICRC

(1996). Moreover, the prize money is superior to that of the other Balzan awards. It seems

that the two features that make the Balzan peace prize special are relatedand – financial

considerations impose the need for long intervals.

Another, very different, example is the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. Its

awards are presented annually in Stockholm in the Swedish Parliament on the day before

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the Nobel Prize presentations. The Right Livelihood Awards aim to support those

working on practical, replicable solutions to the real problems facing today’s world – ‘war

and the arms race, poverty and unemployment, resource depletion and environmental

degradation, human repression and social injustice, inappropriate technologies and potent

scientific knowledge untempered by ethics, cultural and spiritual decline’.36 The idea and

original funding for the awards came from Jakob von Uexkull, a Swedish-German writer,

former member of the European Parliament, and philatelic expert who sold his collection

of rare stamps in 1979 to establish a US $ 1 million endowment for the awards.37 When

the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm rejected his proposal (and funds) for the creation of

two new prizes – one for ecology, and one for work that alleviates poverty – von Uexkull

created his own awards. They are seen as necessary alternatives and complements to the

Nobel prizes and can best be described as awards that honour and support practical

examples of holistic living. The awards are ‘for vision and work contributing to making

life more whole, healing our planet and uplifting humanity’. The yearly cash award of

approx. US $ 250,000 is normally shared between four recipients and is meant for specific

projects rather than personal use.

Of the 79 awards which have been made so far (1980-1999), many have gone to

recipients from the South or from the periphery of the North. If the Nobel Peace Prize

until the 1970s was ‘primarily for men from the western world’ – to quote the subtitle of

Øyvind Tønnesson’s paper, “The Nobel Peace Prize Awards of the 20th Century”38 – the

Right Livelihood Award laureates have, from the beginning, neither been overwhelmingly

men nor mainly drawn from the west: 20 awards have gone to groups, 23 have been

shared between groups and named individuals instrumental in setting up the movement or

organisation, 11 have gone to women, 23 to men, and 2 to couples. In terms of

geographical spread, there have been 19 awards to Asia-Pacific, 10 to Latin America, 9 to

Africa, 4 to the Middle East – together, they represent some 53% of all awards made.

Europe and North America have received 34 awards; the latter figure includes ten

honorary awards. Three awards have gone to international organisations.39 Likewise, the

greater regional spread is matched by a much wider range of activities than those 36 Quoted from RLA Foundation brochure, 1999, unpaginated. 37 See ‘How it all Started’, pp. 1-2 in Friends of Right Livelihood Foundation. Vol. 1, No. 1, June 1984, and Miki Dedijer, ‘The invisible man: The brain behind the alternative Nobel prize’, pp. 40-46 in Scanorama, May 1999. 38 Cf. Nobel Institute Research Seminar, 30 March 2000. 39 Figures compiled by the author on the basis of published documentation provided by the Right Livelihood Foundation.

20

traditionally honoured by the Nobel awards, including, for instance, self-help movements,

indigenous peoples, people-centred and sustainable development, environmental and

health concerns. It is appropriate that the awards are often referred to as ‘Alternative

Nobel Prizes’ since they encompass not only ‘peace’, but also medicine, economics,

physics, and even literature. Compared with other prize-awarding foundations, the Right

Livelihood Foundation is unusual (and, it may be thought, admirable) in that the name of

its founder-benefactor does not appear in the names of the award or of the foundation.

The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (1976) and the Conrad N.

Hilton Foundation (1944) do not quite belong to this category since the awarding of prizes

is only one of their philanthropic functions. They belong, strictly speaking, to our second

category (see below). Among the biennial awards bestowed by the former is the Onassis

Prize for International Understanding and Social Achievement; the latter Foundation

established an annual Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize (of one million dollar) in

1996. In their publicity literature, all four foundations refer to the Nobel prizes.

Secondly is the organisation that awards a prize as only one of its activities.

Depending on the organisation, bestowing prizes can be a minor or major part of its work.

For the Dutch League of Nations and Peace Association, awarding the Grotius medal was

a subsidiary task. This can be deduced from the simple fact that this activity was not

included in the aims of the Association when it was founded in 1919, and was only added

to its programme in 1925. To take a similar example, this time drawn from the

contemporary period, it is clear that bestowing the Indian Peace Award (to mention just

one of a multitude of rather symbolic awards given by peace movement organisations

around the world) is not among the prime functions of the Indian Campaign for Nuclear

Disarmament which created the award in 1983. On the other hand, as the statutes of the

Onassis and Hilton foundations make clear, the awarding of peace and other prizes is seen

as a prime task of both foundations, something which is also suggested by the monetary

sum associated with the award.

Thirdly is the organisation that is responsible for the administration of an award

that it has not created itself, as is the case for Harvard University (Sumner prize) and the

Carnegie Foundation (Wateler prize). Today, several of the prizes awarded by UN

agencies owe their origins to the benefactions of certain individuals, such as the various

prizes endowed by the late Japanese shipping tycoon, Ryoichi Sasakawa.

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(2) Official awards

The other two organisational categories identified – official and international – account

for approximately 20% each of the remainder of prize-awarding bodies. One of the

striking features of peace awards in the second half of the 20th century, and especially of

the last decade, is the rapid growth of prizes awarded by organisations of this kind.

Official awards comprise national, regional and municipal levels. The earliest national

awards (by which is meant awards made by central government, not awards which are

only available to a country’s own citizens or organisations) were the International Stalin

Peace Prizes, instituted by a decree of the Supreme Soviet in December 1949. Five to ten

in number, they were awarded annually to ‘citizens of any country in the world,

irrespective of political, religious, or racial distinctions, for outstanding services in the

struggle against the warmongers and for the strengthening of peace’. In 1956, the name

was changed to International Lenin Peace Prizes; they were awarded by a committee of

the USSR Council of Ministers. It hardly needs saying that for western governments and

many of their citizens these prizes were regarded as badges of dishonour.

The Philippines instituted a Ramon Magsaysay Award for International

Understanding, together with four other awards, ‘to honour the late President of the

Philippines, by giving recognition to persons in Asia who exemplify his greatness of

spirit, integrity and devotion to liberty’.40 The awards were inaugurated in 1958 and made

possible through gifts and low interest loans totalling several million US $ by the

Rockefeller Brothers Fund of New York in addition to donations in kind by the Congress

of the Philippines. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, received the

Award for International Understanding in 1997. The Award, which carries a cash prize of

US $ 50,000, is widely considered the Asian equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1986,

Turkey awarded for the first time the Atatürk International Peace Prize. The Turkish

government discovered that awarding a peace prize can be a perilous business when

Nelson Mandela rejected the honour in 1992, citing Turkey’s human rights record. As if

to underline the point, the Turkish government at about the same time banned ‘The War

Resisters of Izmir’, the first nonviolent and anti-militaristic organisation founded in the

country in 1992. In 1996 it was honoured with the Friedrich Siegmund Schultze Prize

for the Promotion of Nonviolent Action which was first awarded in 1994 by the

40 Cf. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Code of Procedure. Manila, 1977, p. 7.

22

German Evangelical Working Group for the Care of War Resisters. The Turkish

organisation shared the prize with the Association of Greek Conscientious Objectors in

Athens.41

Difficulties of an entirely different kind were faced by the Korean Sports and

Youth Ministry, organisers of the biennial Seoul Peace Prize, within a year after its

inauguration in 1990. On that occasion, the Prize – ‘for outstanding contributions to the

promotion of harmony of mankind and world peace in any field of human endeavour

through sports’42 – was given to Juan A. Samaranch, president of the International

Olympic Committee. The Prize was established ‘to commemorate the great success of the

24th Olympic Games that opened in September, 1988, in Seoul, Korea, with the goal of

promoting friendship among all peoples and enhancing peace and harmony in the world’.

Even though the prize is biennial, its limitation to the world of sports quickly proved to be

problematical. The year following the inaugural award, it was decided to make the prize a

general one, allowing George Schultz to be the recipient in 1992. It seems that other

difficulties arose, perhaps of a financial nature, since no prize was awarded in 1994. The

third award went to Médecins sans Frontières in 1996, the fourth to Kofi Annan in 1998.

After the first two awards, the prize money was reduced from US $ 300,000 to 200,000. It

is interesting to note that article four of the ‘code of procedure’ governing the Seoul Peace

Prize reads: ‘The Area of the Prize shall be “peace” only’. No further information is

provided, however, about its definition. Likewise, article eleven specifies six categories of

nominators but fails to elaborate on one of the groups included, viz. ‘persons who have

received other prestigious awards’. Should it be assumed that only recipients of other

peace awards are envisaged? If so, which ones among them are regarded as prestigious?

No country – perhaps appropriately for the land of the Mahatma – appears to have

instituted more national peace honours than India which can boast of the following

awards: the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding (1964), the

Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development (1985, also known as

the Indira Gandhi Prize), and the Gandhi International Peace Prize (1995). The Indian

government created the latter prize as part of the celebrations of the 125th anniversary of

the birth of the Mahatma. These circumstances, together with the sizeable cash award of

approx. US $ 300,000, are likely to make this one of the most prestigious of all peace

41 See ‘German Prize for Conscientious Objectors’, p. 17 in IPB News, March 1997. 42 Cf. The Seoul Peace Prize Committee, Seoul Peace Prize Inaugural Award 1990. Seoul, 1990, p. 1.

23

awards. It is meant to be for an outstanding contribution to social, economic, and political

transformation through nonviolence and other Gandhian methods. The inaugural award

was presented to Dr. Julius Nyerere in 1996 who notably said during the award ceremony,

‘I have come here … to thank you that you gave us Gandhi’. In subsequent years, the

prize has been awarded to, e.g., Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne and Gerhard Fischer. It is some kind

of poetic justice that the great absentee from the list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates has

more peace awards named after him than anyone else. They range from the Gandhi

Peace Award, given since 1960 by the US-based organisation, Promoting Enduring

Peace Inc., to the Gandhi/King Award for Nonviolence, first awarded in 1999 by the

Interfaith Centre of New York to Kofi Annan. The previous year, the Gandhi Foundation

in the UK awarded its first Gandhi International Peace Award on the occasion of the

50th anniversary of his martyrdom.

Although not a national, official award as such, the Spark M. Matsunaga Medal

of Peace can be regarded as a quasi-official award. It is given annually by the U.S.

Institute of Peace (USIP), following authorisation (and appropriation of funds) by the

U.S. Congress in 1990. Former presidents Carter and Reagan were the first recipients in

1992.43 USIP also organises, since 1986, an annual National Peace Essay Contest for US

high school students. Up to 5,000 students, hailing from all fifty states, participate every

year. In addition to state-level winners, there are three national winners, the top prize

being a $ 10,000 scholarship. This appears to be the only contest of its kind in the world.

In the 1980s and 1990s, provincial and municipal authorities, especially in

Germany, started to institute peace awards. However, the first award of this kind was

established in 1949 in Aachen, when the city was still smarting from the ruinous effects of

World War II. The Karlspreis at the same time commemorates Charlemagne and honours

efforts for European unity. Augsburg, another historic city, awarded its peace prize for the

first time in 1985 on the occasion of the two thousandth anniversary of its foundation by

Emperor Augustus. The Preis Augsburger Friedensfest (City of Augsburg Peace

43 This paper does not take account of official honours and awards which governments frequently bestow on foreign dignitaries or national citizens and which are meant to honour a great diversity of achievements, including peace-related concerns such as defence and the promotion of democracy, freedom, and liberty. The Presidential Medal of Freedom in the US is an example. It similarly ignores national prizes that are given for major contributions to culture and civilisation, such as the Dutch Erasmus Prize, or to science and technology such as the Japan Prize, awarded annually in two categories by the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan. The prize of Yen 50 million, approx. US $ 400,000, is for scientists and researchers who have made outstanding contributions in their field and whose work has contributed to the peace and prosperity of humanity.

24

Prize) is awarded every three years for the promotion of interconfessional unity, a

concern which harkens back to the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) between Catholic

and Protestant rulers.44 The cities of Osnabrück and Oldenburg honour famous peace

figures from the inter-war years through the biennial Erich Maria Remarque Prize

(1991) and Carl-von-Ossietzky Prize for Politics and Contemporary History (1981),

respectively.45 In 1999 the first Göttinger Friedenspreis was awarded; although it is the

creation of a private foundation based in the city, the Dr. Roland Röhl Foundation, the

name given to the award may well result in its informal or formal adoption by the city. In

September 1995, sixty years after the proclamation of the National Socialist Race Laws in

Nuremberg, the city awarded the first biennial Nuremberg International Human Rights

Award to Sergei Kovalev. At the level of the Länder there is since 1994 the Hessian

Peace Prize while Nordrhine-Westphalia has been awarding the Gustav Heinemann

Peace Prize for Children’s Books since at least 1983. The former prize, of DM 50,000,

was made possible through an endowment of over DM 2 million by Albert Osswald,

Prime Minister of Hesse from 1969 until 1976.46 The 350th anniversary of the Peace of

Westphalia in 1998 inspired the creation of a Westphalian Peace Prize, first awarded

that year to Václav Havel; at the same time a Youth Prize is awarded (which went to a

Basque peace group). The biennial prize of DM 100,000 is divided equally. It has been

created by a consortium of thirty large businesses, the Economic Society for Westphalia

and Lippe, and is meant to honour efforts for European integration that recognise the

importance of federal principles and strong regions.

Although it is not in any formal sense an official award (and formally belongs to

the category of ‘private’ awards), it is nevertheless appropriate to mention here what is

undoubtedly the country’s most important (and together with the Karlspreis, also oldest)

peace prize. This is the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the

German Book Trade, sometimes also referred to as the German Peace Prize).47 The award

has become the highlight of the annual Frankfurt Book Fair and benefits from the

44 See Peter Menacher (ed.), Gelebtes Miteinander: Der ‘Preis Augsburger Friedensfest’ und seine ökumenischen Impulse. Augsburg: Wissner, 1997. 45 Cf. Carl von Ossietzky, Kurt Tucholsky, Georg Friedrich Nicolai: Eine Dokumentation zum Carl-von-Ossietzky-Preis der Stadt Oldenburg 1986. Oldenburg: Heinz Holzberg, 1987. 46 Cf. ‘Verleihung des 1. Hessischen Friedenspreises 1994’, special issue of HSFK-Standpunkte, No. 4, November 1994. 47 Referring to the great prestige of the prize, Wolf Lepenies has said, ‘one might describe it as our Nobel Prize, although not as much money comes with it’. Cf. ‘Our Jorge is honoured’, in Times Higher Education Supplement, 21 Oct. 1994, p. 16.

25

publicity normally surrounding this event. The award ceremony is a dignified occasion,

being attended by the country’s leading political figures. It has assumed a quasi-official

status, and is one of the very few annual peace prizes (apart from the Nobel Peace Prize)

which is regularly reported on in the international media. The prize is also very well

documented: the lectures given at the award ceremony are not only published every year

but they have also been collected in several volumes, as is the case for the Nobel prizes.48

The prize can be regarded as a combination of a literature and a peace award.

The most important of the regional awards outside Germany are the Prince of

Asturias Awards which have been presented since 1981 in Oviedo, capital city of the

Principality of Asturias. Among the eight annual awards is one ‘for international co-

operation’ and one ‘for concord’. The awards are granted by the Prince of Asturias

Foundation and presented every year by the Prince of Asturias (traditionally the title

given to the heir to the Spanish throne). Because of this strong royal involvement, the

awards can be seen as having national, rather than purely regional, significance. In fact,

the region they initially focussed on was the Ibero-American one, where the awards are

regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel prizes. That the awards aim to establish

themselves at a global level is suggested by the fact that a recent publication, celebrating

their 20th anniversary, was issued in four languages.49 The Autonomous Government of

Catalonia has awarded a Catalonia International Prize (Premi Internacional Catalunya)

annually since 1989. It is not specifically for peace but for work that has made a decisive

contribution to the development of cultural, scientific or human values around the world.

The prize for 1995 (endowed with ECU 80,000) was shared between Václav Havel and

Richard von Weizsäcker ‘for the ethical dimension of their political careers’.

48 Cf. Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Reden und Würdigungen. Frankfurt a.M.: Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels. Vols. for 1951-1960, 1961-1965, 1966-1975, 1976-1985, and 1986-1998 have been published in 1961, 1967, 1977, 1985, and 1999, respectively. See also Eugen Emmerling & Franziska Busch (eds.), ‘Warum denn nicht Friede? 50 Jahre Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels”. Frankfurt am Main: Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels e.V., 2000. An excellent evaluation of the meaning and evolution of the prize is Britta Scheideler’s ‘Von Konsens zu Kritik: Der Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels’, pp. 46-88 in Stephan Füssel (ed.), 50 Jahre Frankfurter Buchmesse, 1949-1999. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1999. The 50th anniversary of the award in 1999 was commemorated by the issuing of a stamp by the Bundespost. It seems that up to then the only peace prize that had been the subject of postal stamps anywhere in the world was the Nobel Peace Prize. 49 Cf. Prince of Asturias Awards 2000. Oviedo: Prince of Asturias Foundation, 2000.

26

(3) International awards

Awards by international organisations have flourished in recent years, too, but also here

precedents were set early with the creation of the Nansen Medal of the UN High

Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1954 and UNICEF’s Maurice Pate Award in

1966. If UNESCO, to mention another of the UN specialised agencies, was slow off the

mark – its Prize for Peace Education was a relative latecomer in 198050 – it has certainly

made up for this in later years. We have already referred to the Félix Houphouët-Boigny

Peace Prize. The UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance

and Nonviolence was first awarded in 1996. In the same year UNESCO instituted the

Mayors for Peace Prize, since renamed UNESCO Cities for Peace Prize (UNESCO

Director-General Federico Mayor, under whose term of office many UNESCO awards

were instituted, was himself the first recipient of the Peres Center for Peace Award in

1999. The Center, founded in 1997, aims to advance Arab-Israeli cooperation, for

instance through its Young Leaders Network consisting of Egyptian, Jordanian,

Palestinian and Israeli members). Among other UNESCO awards (some of which are

given every other year) are the Prize for Human Rights Education, the Prize for

Children and Young People’s Literature in the Service of Tolerance, the Gandhi

Medal, and prizes named after Simon Bolivar, Jose Marti, and Guillermo Cano (the latter

being the World Press Freedom Prize). Some of the latter could be regarded as peace-

related prizes rather than as peace prizes as such.

In July 1997, the UN Security Council established the Dag Hammarskjöld

Medal ‘in recognition and commemoration of those who had lost their lives as a result of

service in peace-keeping operations under the UN’. In October 1998, Secretary-General

Kofi Annan presented the first medals at a special commemorative meeting of the General

Assembly (marking the 50th anniversary of peacekeeping operations) to the families of

three UN officials who lost their lives while pursuing peace missions (including the

Hammarskjöld and Bernadotte families). The new medal is being funded from the

50 An excellent overview and discussion is Francine Fournier’s ‘UNESCO Prize for Peace Education’ in Young Seek Choue (ed.), World Encyclopedia of Peace (Second Edition). New York: Oceana Publ. & Seoul: Seoul Press, Vol. V, 1999, pp. 233-40. See also Unku Abdul Aziz & Betty A. Reardon, ‘The UNESCO Prize for Peace Education: Ten Years of Learning for Peace’ in Peace, Environment and Education, 1991, No. 3, pp. 3-12. See also Antonino Drago’s report on a nation-wide but private peace education prize project, launched in 1984, ‘A Dozen Years of Peace Education in Italy as Embodied in the Winners of the F. Pagano National Prize’ in ibid., 1994, No. 17, p. 24.

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proceeds of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the UN peacekeeping forces in 1988.51 In

1981, the New York-based International Peace Academy presented its first Distinguished

Peacekeeper’s Award posthumously to Lt. Gen. E. L. M. Burns, first commander of the

UN Emergency Force (UNEF) I; in 1985, Brian Urquhart became the second recipient of

the same award.52 The IPA established the award in memory of Ralph Bunche, in order to

honour individuals who have made a singular contribution to the peaceful resolution of

conflicts through their service in UN peacekeeping.

Of the many peace awards and honours which originate in the UN, we single out,

lastly, the most ‘democratic’ of all – the Peace Messenger Award. The organisation

created the award in 1986 to honour organisations and institutions (cities could also be

awarded a special certificate) that had made a significant contribution to the promotion of

the International Year of Peace. Several hundred awards have been presented in

subsequent years. (The Norwegian Nobel Institute’s absence from the list of awardees,

unlike, for instance, PRIO, is due only to the fact that no application was made.) When

peace awards become mass-produced, however, questions can legitimately be raised

about their value. Is anyone singled out when everyone is? Presenting the same award in

bulk inevitably weakens the value of each individual award. Every organisation that

intends to use the instrument of the peace prize for promoting peace is faced with the

problem of diminishing returns. This award should not be confused with the (at least so

far) much more exclusive appointment of Messengers of Peace – ‘individuals who

possess widely recognised talents in the fields of arts, literature, music and sports and who

have agreed to help focus world-wide attention on the work of the UN’. Among the seven

Messengers, who were all appointed in 1997-98, are Muhammad Ali, Michael Douglas,

Luciano Pavarotti and Elie Wiesel. UNESCO has likewise appointed several Artists for

Peace.

With reference to the UN, a distinct category of awards is represented by those

that have been established by various national or local chapters of the UN Association

(UNA). UNAs in Australia, Canada, UK and US have all established annual peace

awards. Their impact can be considerable and unforeseen. The UN Association of the US,

in presenting its Global Leadership Award for 1997 to Ted Turner, may possibly take 51 See the following UN press releases: SC/6398, SC/6399 and SG/SM/6288 of 22 July 1997 and SG/SM/6733/PKO/75 of 6 October 1998. 52 Cf. ‘IPA Honors Brian E. Urquhart with Distinguished Peacekeeper Award’, pp. 1 & 6 in Coping with Conflict: A Review of the Work and Progress of the International Peace Academy, Inc., Vol. 10, Fall 1985. Since then, the award has been discontinued.

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credit for his decision, two days before the award ceremony, to donate US $ 1 billion to

UN causes. Turner’s generosity inspired the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to create the

World Citizenship Award for ‘individuals of high distinction who have acted for the

benefit of all humanity’. Turner became its first recipient in 1998.53 He also received in

the same year the U Thant Peace Award, a symbolic and occasional presentation

established in 1982 by Sri Chinmoy, founder of ‘The Peace Meditation at the UN’. For

young people up to the age of sixteen, the Friends of the UN, in association with the

DaCapo Foundation in New York, has created the Wright-Dunbar Global Youth Peace

and Tolerance Awards. They are for ‘honouring youth who apply their creative talents

to further peace and tolerance’. The awards are given in seven different categories and

comprise cash scholarships of US $ 5,000 each.

The practice of instituting peace awards, so common throughout the UN system,

was apparently foreign to its predecessor. The League of Nations, its first Secretary-

General, and several prominent figures associated with the creation and subsequent work

of the League have all been recipients of the few peace awards that existed at the time.

The League system was of course much less elaborate than its successor; moreover, the

practice whereby philanthropists provide endowments that allow the UN and its agencies

to make awards was unknown in the League era.54 However, a more general and pertinent

factor explaining the passivity of the League in creating peace awards is that this merely

reflected the absence of a culture of instituting (peace) awards in society at large at that

time.

Among peace or peace-related awards of other intergovernmental organisations,

perhaps the best-known is the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought which the

European Parliament established in 1985. The Council of Europe, for its part, awards

every three years a European Human Rights Prize. The Women of Europe Award was

created in 1987 under the auspices of the European Commission, the European Parliament

and the European Movement. It is presented each year for an outstanding contribution 53 ‘Ted Turner Receives Foundation’s World Citizenship Award’, p. 3 in Waging Peace Worldwide: Journal of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Fall 1998. Just over ten years earlier, the Foundation had already bestowed its Distinguished Peace Leadership Award upon Turner (1987). 54 Several UN awards, including the US $ 25,000 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education and the US $ 200,000 UNEP [UN Environment Programme] Sasakawa Environment Prize have been made possible through endowments provided by Ryoichi Sasakawa. Their establishment can be seen as part of a campaign to obtain the Nobel Peace Prize. The Japanese businessman and philanthropist set up an office in Oslo to promote his candidacy. Cf. James Adams, ‘Governments unite against WHO chief’, p. 20 in The Sunday Times, 18 April 1993. The Sasakawa Peace Foundation, established in 1986 in Tokyo, provides details of its founder’s extraordinary largesse in its annual reports.

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towards European Community integration (rather than towards the promotion of women’s

interests). It seems that outside the UN system, no intergovernmental organisation has

instituted a peace prize (so called). This is not the case for international non-governmental

organisations, several of which have instituted awards explicitly in the name of peace.

Among them are the World Methodist Council Peace Award (1976), the Pax Christi

International Peace Award (1988), and the International Peace Bureau’s Sean

MacBride Peace Prize (1992). Mention should also be made here of the various awards

instituted by the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Its Standing Commission

awarded the Red Cross and Red Crescent Prize for Peace and Humanity for the first

time in 1989 (to the Lebanese Red Cross) on the 125th anniversary of the movement. The

same Commission selects recipients of the Henry Dunant Medal, first awarded in 1969.

It is the highest honour the Movement can bestow upon one of its members. (Already in

1912 the International Committee of the Red Cross created the Florence Nightingale

Medal, the highest Red Cross honour for nurses which is awarded every other year.) The

Henry Dunant Prize was first awarded in 1995 by the Geneva-based private Henry

Dunant Prize Foundation.55 The prize for 1999 went to Professor Gjyltekin Shehu,

founder of the Henry Dunant Association of Kosovo, and responsible for the first

Albanian translation of Dunant’s A Memory of Solferino and other founding works of the

Red Cross movement.

If, today, the Nobel Peace Prize has become a global and universally recognised

honour and symbol of peace, this has been a slow process. The awards to women, to non-

whites, and to a broad field of activities (especially through the expansion of the concept

of peace through the notion of human rights), have on the whole become features of the

prize in only the second half of its history. The growth of other peace prizes seems to

mirror this evolution in some respects, particularly the geographical distribution of

awards. It is only in recent years that they have been spreading (as institutions) to an

increasing number of countries and regions of the world. At the same time, there is also

an increasing variety in the nature of awarding bodies. Thirdly, the evolving concept of

peace is reflected in the differentiated naming of awards (with the attendant difficulty of

delineating the subject).

55 Cf. ‘Henry Dunant Medal’, pp. 736-41 in International Review of the Red Cross, No. 325, Dec. 1998; Roger Durand, ‘Prix Henry Dunant’, pp. 79-102 in Bulletin de la Société Henry Dunant, No. 18, 1995-97.

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Given the existence of so many awards for peace, what questions arise concerning

their relationship to the Nobel Peace Prize (NPP)? For instance, is the latter in any way

responsible for the former - has the NPP acted as a spur for the creation of the later

prizes? This might suggest that the prestige and success of the NPP has encouraged

imitation. Or is it the case that, on the contrary, other prizes have been established out of a

sense of frustration surrounding the decisions of the Norwegian Nobel Committee? Has

criticism (rather than praise) been the catalyst for the creation of new awards? In

the first case, the further question can be raised whether the influence of the NPP is also

to be found in the procedures adopted by other peace prize awarding bodies. Secondly, do

these other prizes in any way affect the standing of the NPP? With so many awards

available, is it possible that the NPP will loose its pre-eminence in the field? ‘Threats’

could conceivably arise from such factors as the prominence of the awarding body, or the

international composition of the jury, or the amount of the prize money, or a combination

of these and similar factors. Before addressing this question, it is necessary to establish

what is special about the NPP. There seems little doubt, however, that the Nobel Peace

Prize has overwhelmingly functioned as a role model for the creation of other peace

prizes.

The unique nature of the Nobel Peace Prize

The prominence of the NPP is the result of several factors that can be distinguished as

follows. In the first place, the creation of the NPP was unique in two important respects.

The many awards for peace made in the 19th century all had two features in common: the

awards were not regular but occasional (in other words, they were not instituted or

permanent), and they were made to honour a piece of writing (typically, prizes were

awarded in essay contests). The NPP was the first general award for peace: it was meant

to honour a distinguished contribution to peace that did not have to take the form of a

literary production. Although today this is unlikely to strike us as anything exceptional, at

the time it was quite an innovation. At the same time, with the exception of the Sumner

award, it was the first award to be instituted on a permanent basis and to be given every

year. In the history of peace awards, the NPP thus represents a major breakthrough on

account of its generality and regularity. It can be pointed out that these are historic merits

only since many of the later peace prizes share these features: prizes are awarded

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annually, and for an effort the nature of which is not circumscribed but is left open-ended.

Even so, it has to be recognised that the Nobel Peace Prize had already enjoyed half a

century of history – and experience and publicity, as Geir Lundestad has observed56 –

before any other of today’s peace prizes was established, with the sole exception of the

Wateler prize. This makes it, on this account alone, unique and venerable, the only

aristocrat in a growing family – and one which, unlike much of that family, is destined to

live forever.

A second set of characteristics that make the NPP unique concerns other factors

that were, to quote the title of a famous autobiography, ‘present at the creation’. The fact

that the peace prize is only one of five Nobel prizes has helped to give it an aura and

respectability which it might otherwise not have acquired (or not so soon). Also, the

considerable prize money has no doubt contributed to making the award very desirable

and special. These factors, too, are beginning to lose their uniqueness. The Balzan,

Onassis and Prince of Asturias awards comprise, like the Nobel prizes, various categories

(including peace). However, prospective imitators or competitors of the Nobel Prize have

a hard task in front of them, viz. to match, year after year, the prize money associated with

the Nobel awards. This requires a long-term investment which few, if any, individuals or

organisations are able or willing to afford. It is interesting to note that in the wider field of

awards there is one annual prize, the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, whose

founder has stipulated that the prize money must always surpass that of the Nobel

prizes.57 The award in 1999, to Professor Ian Barbour, included a cash prize of more than

US $ 1.2 million. It can be argued, on the one hand, that this fixation on Mammon seems

singularly ill-advised and inappropriate for an award in the religious domain. On the other

hand, the philosophy of the founder of the Templeton Prize is that its creation was

necessary because the Nobel prizes overlooked one of humanity’s most important

disciplines – spirituality. The high level of the award is meant to convey the primacy of

the spiritual over all other human activities. The prize, the largest given in any field, and

commonly referred to as religion’s Nobel prize, was established in 1972 by Sir John

Templeton, an American-born British citizen. The prize is to promote progress in

religious understanding and inter-religious co-operation. It is meant to make the lives of

the recipients well known in order to provide examples of religious devotion; it also aims

56 Cf. ‘The Meaning of the Nobel Peace Prize’, pp. 7-10 in Holl & Kjelling, o.c. 57 Cf. Ruth Gledhill, ‘Of God and Mammon’, The Times, 6 March 1991.

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at helping people sense the existence of an infinite, universal spirit.58 Since there is no

guarantee that money can buy prestige, even in the long term, it seems unlikely that there

will ever be a serious or sustained challenge to the pre-eminence enjoyed by the Nobel

prizes.

A third set of factors is related to what has become of the prize. The dignity of the

occasion, and the good record of the prize-awarding body in the selection of laureates

(with only few lapses of both omission and commission), have further contributed to the

unrivalled prestige of the NPP. All the factors mentioned so far have resulted, particularly

in the last few decades, in unrivalled media attention – unrivalled, that is, as regards the

other Nobel awards, as well as other peace awards. This degree of attention on the part of

the media is perhaps not in the first place due to the importance which the world attaches

to peace (and therefore also to the most prestigious award available in this area) as it is to

such factors as the growth of the media industry, its appetite for news which is constant

and insatiable, and the contemporary obsession with fame. It cannot be denied, however,

that the threat of a nuclear world war was a constant preoccupation of large numbers of

people during the Cold War that inspired the emergence of large peace movements. The

wish to avoid war or large-scale violence (or bring violent conflict to an early conclusion)

has become a feature of the international community that is likely to become even more

pronounced. The combination of both factors mentioned is likely to keep the Nobel Peace

Prize in the public eye, perhaps to an even greater degree than heretofore.

Lastly, the NPP is unique in a subtle and crucially important manner that does not

seem to have been articulated before. This factor is probably best recognised when the

NPP is compared with its ‘rivals’ (or ‘companions’, to adopt less competitive or

aggressive language) from the point of view of the nature of the awarding body. The

Norwegian Nobel Committee is an independent body, consisting of five individuals who

are beholden to nobody (except their own conscience). It is true that they are elected by,

and can be said to represent, a cross-section of Norwegian society. It is also true, as has

been abundantly demonstrated in the preceding three papers in the current Norwegian

Nobel Institute Series, that the Committee (and its advisers) has traditionally been

58 For a thoughtful comment by Kofi Annan on the award in 1998 to Sir Sigmund Sternberg, which argues, inter alia, that the Templeton Prize ‘is in the best tradition of the universal ideals enshrined in the United Nations Charter’, see UN Press Release SG/SM/6621 of 30 June 1998 entitled ‘Secretary-General Hails Award of Templeton Prize to Sir Sigmund Sternberg’. A good case can be made for regarding the Prize as a kind of peace prize. Its first recipient was Nobel Peace laureate Mother Teresa; laureates of several other peace prizes have also received the award.

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informed in its decision-making by perspectives in which liberal internationalism and

Norwegian national interests have come naturally together. (Perhaps the weight of

Norwegian national interest in the decision-making process will have to be reduced for

the post-World War II period as a result of the significant changes introduced in the late

1930s concerning the membership of the Committee, the effect of which has been to

loosen the links between the Committee and the government of the day).

Apart from the above reservation, the Committee and its members are

independent. As far as is known, no influence of any kind is exercised by the ‘mother’

organisation, the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm. There is no ‘line’ of any kind that has

to be followed, no doctrine that the Committee has to adhere to, no overall scheme in

which its decisions have to fit. This is because the Foundation itself has no such

conditions or limitations imposed upon itself – which, in turn, is the result of the open-

mindedness of Alfred Nobel himself. It can therefore be claimed that, to all intents and

purposes, the process leading to the selection and award of the NPP is as objective and

detached as possible (always allowing, of course, for the individual proclivities of

Committee members and advisers).

How does this situation compare with other bodies awarding peace prizes?

Although they are awarded by a great number and variety of organisations, it is

noteworthy that for only a very few their whole raison d’être is the business of prize-

giving. The Nobel Foundation seems to have been the first of its kind. As regards peace

prizes, some of the earliest were similarly awarded by bodies that had no other purpose.

However, the organisations behind such prizes, such as the Woodrow Wilson prize, were

small foundations or institutes that in no way can be compared with those supporting the

Nobel prizes. Only recent decades have witnessed the emergence of foundations on a

similar scale as the Nobel Foundation (indeed, it is typically seen as a model, worthy of

emulation), such as those associated with the names of Onassis or Hilton. Whether the

organisation that institutes or administers the award is large or small is, however, not the

issue here. The overwhelming majority of peace awards are given by organisations and

institutions whose prime function lies somewhere else and for whom the awarding of a

prize is very much a secondary or subsidiary function. The mere fact that the creation of

an organisation typically precedes by many years the creation by it of an award is

indicative of the rather peripheral nature of the latter in the overall activity of the

organisation. The institution of awards is frequently seen as constituting one instrument

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that the organisation uses (among many others) as part of a wider process of education,

promotion, publicity, or propaganda concerning its aims. This brings us to the heart of the

matter, which is that virtually every peace prize has an instrumental link to the

organisation that has created it. In other words, the prize is not for peace per se but for the

kind of peace that is compatible with its creator’s goals and values. To that extent, an

element (which can be substantial) of partiality or partisanship is built into the selection

process and this unavoidably diminishes the universality of the appeal or recognition of

the prize. Peace awards instituted by churches, political parties, trade unions, women’s

organisations – to mention just a few of the social institutions which are among the main

originators of peace awards today – are often meant to promote the views of their

sponsors who make no secret of this.

Towards a pantheon of peace prizes?

It is perhaps inevitable that, given the great (and growing) number of peace awards, the

question of their relative merits arises. In particular, the question arises whether there is a

hierarchy among them or on what bases one could be established. It seems that only one

thing is incontrovertible, viz. the unassailable position occupied by the Nobel Peace Prize.

It is both universally recognised and respected, like no other peace award. The current

Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee has accurately and tactfully summarised the

matter as follows: ‘Depending on one’s definition of peace, there are probably more than

one hundred peace prizes in the world today. In the Norwegian Nobel Committee, we like

to think that few, if any, of these prizes are as well known and as highly respected as the

Nobel Peace Prize.’59 We have already indicated above some of the main reasons why all

other prizes are fated to have to live in the shadow of the Nobel prizes.

If they cannot rival Nobel, they may wish to be considered for the runner-up

position. Just as laureates take satisfaction and encouragement from the conferring of an

award, so awarding bodies themselves are likely to be sensitive to the way in which the

world judges (or fails to judge) their activities. Prize awarding bodies will periodically

review the significance of their prize awarding activity, with a view to enhancing this (for

instance, by increasing the value of the award, or giving it a higher profile among the

59 Cf. Geir Lundestad, Foreword, pp. 15-16 in Marek Thee (ed.), Peace! By the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. An Anthology. Paris: UNESCO Publ., 1995.

35

activities of the organisation) or – at the other extreme – discontinuing it. One factor in

such deliberations is bound to be the perceived standing of the award – in the organisation

itself, in the wider field of peacemaking, and when compared to other peace prizes. We

shall offer some reflections on the latter aspect, which is likely to be the most

problematical one.

An obvious and popular criterion for ranking peace awards is by monetary value.

It is not necessarily the case, however, that prestige and recognition can be bought in this

way. Many people, especially in the field of international relations, peace and conflict

studies, and the peace and human rights movements, will be able to mention several peace

awards. It is unlikely, however, that anyone will be familiar with the Balzan Prize for

Humanity, Peace and Brotherhood among Peoples (which, after Nobel, and now also

the Hilton Humanitarian Prize – and leaving aside the Templeton Prize – clearly tops

the monetary ranking order). The lack of recognition, despite the high monetary value,

seems primarily due to the infrequency of the award. The long and erratic intervals that

characterise the Balzan peace prize constitute a serious obstacle for the prize to establish

itself in the public consciousness.

If lack of generosity is one reason why most peace prizes will forever remain in

the shadow of Nobel, lack of generality provides a second explanation. Many of the peace

awards that have been created in recent decades are meant to honour a specific category

of peace work (such as peace education, religious harmony, racial tolerance) or of peace

worker (such as journalist, novelist, woman, young person). It is obvious that by

restricting the field of candidates in this way, the appeal of the award to the general public

is correspondingly reduced. Although belonging to the top ten awards from a monetary

point of view, the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving

World Order is bound to remain obscure, familiar only to scholars of international

relations. This is of course not to detract from the intrinsic merits of this particular award.

It can, indeed, be argued that the Grawemeyer provides a much-needed ‘correction’ to the

Nobel Peace Prize that has rarely honoured ‘ideas for improving world order’ – the prize

to Norman Angell can be seen as a rare exception – but instead has concentrated on

practical work. Leading figures in post-1945 peace and conflict research such as Quincy

Wright, Elise Boulding, and Rudolph Rummel are among those who have been nominated

for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since the Norwegian Nobel Committee appears not to

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recognise ‘intellectual and educational contributions’ as a suitable category (or accords it

a low priority), the Grawemeyer can be seen as filling an important lacuna.

To illustrate the point, let us engage in a short, playful excursion and assume that

Alfred Nobel died not in 1896 but 1796, and that the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded

in 1801. Is it conceivable that Immanuel Kant, whose Perpetual Peace was published in

1795, would not have been a prime candidate for one of the earliest awards? The answer

seems obvious enough. Two hundred years after its publication, Kant’s essay is more

intently studied than ever before and is providing both intellectual inspiration and moral

sustenance for peace thinkers and activists alike. Perhaps for several of the years before

1815, the prize would have been withheld, although at this time there were plenty

of proposals for European and world peace.60 Then the ‘peacemakers’ who gathered in

Vienna would have been likely candidates, first and foremost the scholar-diplomat

Friedrich von Gentz, the Kissinger of his day. Also the leaders of the peace societies then

emerging in Britain and the US would – or should – have been high on the list of

candidates. Indeed, now that we can look back over a century of Nobel peace laureates, it

would be an interesting and valuable exercise to compile a list of hypothetical laureates

for the 19th century.

The Grawemeyer is not wholly without precedent: the Lentz International Peace

Research Award was established in 1972 by the Lentz Peace Research Laboratory in St.

Louis, Missouri. The award commemorates Dr. Theodore F. Lentz, a pioneer of peace

research who founded the Peace Research Laboratory in 1945 following the atomic

bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is the oldest continuously operating peace

research centre in the world (which in 1986, ten years after the death of its founder, was

named after him).61

A third factor that is likely to have a bearing on the recognition and prestige of

peace prizes concerns their naming. It is contended here that, everything else being equal,

prizes that incorporate the name of an individual who enjoys public respect – rather than

recognition – will themselves experience enhanced recognition and prestige.62 The ‘added

value’ represented in this way by some of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates – Ossietzky,

60 For an overview and discussion, see ter Meulen, o.c., Vol. 2, pp. 5-174. 61 Cf. Virginia Nesmith, ‘Lentz International Peace Research Award’, pp. 540-1 in Ervin Laszlo & Jong Youl Yoo (eds.), World Encyclopedia of Peace. Oxford: Pergamon Press, Vol. 1, 1986; ‘Lentz Peace Research Laboratory’, p. 447 in Young Seek Choue (ed.), World Encyclopedia of Peace, o.c., Vol. 7. 62 The name Onassis may command widespread recognition, but not necessarily respect, and the same distinction is likely to apply to any awards carrying the same name.

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Schweitzer, Sakharov, King, and Nansen are notable examples – can be considerable.

Possibly even more advantageous in this connection are the names of Albert Einstein and

Mahatma Gandhi. The ‘pool’ of global icons is surprisingly small; if they are –

fortunately – not all white and western, women – unfortunately – are not yet included

(with the possible exception of Mother Teresa). It is interesting to observe that of the top

twenty-five peace awards (ranked by monetary value),63 19 are named after individuals,

only one of whom is a woman (Indira Gandhi). (The Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize

is named partly after Dominique de Menil who joined Jimmy Carter in creating the

Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation in 1986.) Of the remaining six prizes, three carry

geographical names (Africa, Hesse, Seoul), two incorporate the name of an international

organisation (UNESCO), and one expresses an idea (Right Livelihood). Prizes that are

founded by heads of state and that incorporate their name – as is the case with the Félix

Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize, or the Gaddafi International Prize for Human

Rights – are liable to be regarded with some scepticism by the international community

on account of the intentions of their founders and the questionable use of the public purse.

One factor that is unlikely to be playing an important role in the comparative

evaluation of peace awards is the quality of the decision-making process of the prize-

awarding organisation. Whether the search procedure, the way in which nominations are

invited and processed, is elaborate or simple may have little to do with the general

public’s assessment of the laureate. As long as the general public is able to identify with

the choice of the prize-awarding body, the precise manner in which the latter has reached

its decision is of little consequence or interest. The evaluation of a candidate is of course

partly determined by the standing of the awarding body itself – the greater its credibility,

the more readily will its decisions be accepted. From this point of view, organisations

whose chief or only purpose is the giving of awards, and which have developed elaborate

infrastuctures to administer this activity, many not necessarily have an advantage over

organisations for whom the awarding of a prize is a minor part of their work. Answers to

questions such as ‘Who is behind the prize?’, ‘What else does the organisation do?’, or

‘What is its main purpose?’, are likely to be used as guidelines for an evaluation of the

nature and quality of the prize awarded by it.

Durability or longevity is undoubtedly a factor that plays a role in the process of

recognition and respect. But the low profile of the Wateler Peace Prize seems to suggest

63 For details, see Kurtz, o.c., p. 807.

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that no major role can be ascribed to this factor alone and that other features have to be

present for a long-established prize to be(come) widely known. Whereas the impending

announcement of the new laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize creates every year an

atmosphere of anticipation and often animated discussion and speculation – and the award

ceremony itself occasions widespread interest and publicity – nothing remotely similar

happens for any other peace award. What may well be the second most famous peace

award in the world, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, is frequently widely

commented upon in the German and international press but only after its winner has been

announced. Pre-award discussion is simply unknown.

The Nobel Peace Prize and other awards for peace

The Nobel Peace Prize is the only award for peace that the whole world recognises,

moreover, it is the only award for peace that the world claims as its own. The world

believes it has a stake in the award – hence the occasional suggestions (which Norwegians

would be fully entitled to regard as impertinent) that it has to be entrusted to a body

comprising citizens from more countries than only Norway.64 It is interesting to note, for

instance, that the international secretary of Pax Christi recently sent a letter to the

secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee drawing its attention to the plight of the

Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and, in effect, proposing that the Nobel Peace

Prize be awarded to them. (They have formed an association whose members have been

protesting for more than 23 years in Buenos Aires, demanding that the government

provide full information on those who disappeared during the military dictatorship. They

argue that lasting peace in Argentina will only be possible with truth and justice).65 It

seems peculiar that Pax Christi’s own International Peace Award, which the

organisation instituted in 1988, has so far not been given to the Mothers. This episode

raises interesting questions about the strategy of organisations awarding peace prizes.

Since the work of the Mothers – for peace and justice – manifestly qualifies them for

being considered for Pax Christi’s own award, why has no award been made?

64 This criticism has apparently also failed to impress several governments which have instituted national peace awards, and whose jury members are composed solely of nationals. This is the case, for instance, for the Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Seoul Peace Prize, and for two of the three Indian awards mentioned above. 65 Cf. the item in Pax Christi Newsletter, Nr. 75, April 2000.

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Furthermore, might such an award not enhance the candidature of the Mothers for the

award sought?

It seems that one of the unintended functions of peace awards is (or could be) to

provide the Norwegian Nobel Committee with a wider pool of candidates than would

otherwise be available – candidates, moreover, who have already been subjected to a

selection procedure and whose merits have withstood scrutiny. In this way, some

candidates may come to the attention of the Committee sooner than would otherwise have

been the case. It is unlikely, and perhaps even undesirable, that the Committee will ever

be swayed in its decision-making by the decisions of others; the supplementary role of

other peace awards seems, however, both legitimate and desirable. Other peace awarding

bodies are not in the habit of informing the Committee of their laureates (a practice that

one could have expected as part of a strategy for promoting their candidature for the

prime peace award). This apparently only happens infrequently and incidentally.

Likewise, the Committee does not go out of its way to discover the names of those

honoured by its shadowy counterparts.

Several of the latter, we note, have been created by Nobel Peace Prize laureates,

especially institutions and their affiliates. In addition to the awards already referred to

above – created by the Red Cross, the International Peace Bureau, and the UN (for those

who lost their lives in peacekeeping) – the German section of International Physicians for

the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) has instituted since 1991 a Clara Immerwahr

Prize.66 Another link between the Nobel Peace Prize and other awards is the engagement

by the latter of individual Nobel laureates on selection panels, often in a leading role. For

instance, Norman Borlaug chairs the selection committee of the annual $ 250,000 World

Food Prize, regarded as the Nobel for food research. (What is more, he can claim credit

for the creation of this award.)67 Desmond Tutu likewise acts in a similar capacity for

various peace awards.

Other peace awards can also be seen as providing a measure of compensation in

those instances where a widely admired candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, for whatever

reason, fails to be so honoured. It seems, for example, that Václav Havel has ‘missed the

66 See Clara Immerwahr Auszeichnung der IPPNW. Heidesheim: IPPNW Sektion Deutschland, 1991. One of the merits of some peace awards is that they honour not only the recipient but also the person whose name is being commemorated and who has been unjustly forgotten, as is the case here. 67 See his remarks during the ceremony announcing the General Foods World Food Prize, 19 May 1986 (copy in Norwegian Nobel Institute Library, ‘Freds-file’).

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boat’ and that his time has passed. (The same could be said of Jimmy Carter.)68 The

‘Velvet Revolution’ has already become a dim memory, and a Nobel Peace Prize to its

chief architect would now appear rather stale. Havel, and the world, and perhaps even the

Norwegian Nobel Committee, can derive satisfaction from the award to him of such

prizes as the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1989), Olof Palme Prize (1989),

Beyond War Award (1990), International Simon Bolivar Prize (1990), Indira Gandhi

Prize (1993), Onassis Prize (1993), Theodor Heuss Prize (1993), Catalonia International

Prize (1995), Prince of Asturias Award (1997), Fulbright Prize (1997), Westphalian Peace

Prize (1998), and Erasmus Prize (1986). Moreover, it will not be long – if it has not

happened already – before his name will grace one or other distinguished award. It is also

appropriate to remember the support that he has lent to several candidates for the Nobel

Peace Prize, including his successful nomination for Aun San Suu Kyi for the 1991

award.69

Given the persistence and prevalence of violent conflict, and the great number and

variety of deserving peace-making actors around the world (often working in obscurity

and against all odds), one annual peace award is manifestly not sufficient. Another

obvious function of other peace awards is that they help considerably to making up the

‘deficit’. Such honouring of special efforts on behalf of peace, involving celebration and

commemoration, is important since it helps to emphasise, highlight, and reinforce the

significance of the particular achievement concerned. This wider attention and publicity

which awards make possible is able to generate a momentum with beneficial

consequences. As President Clinton observed in accepting the W. Averell Harriman

Award of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (in December 1998

in Washington DC, for his efforts to bring the parties in the Northern Ireland conflict

together), ‘even though all these issues may seem unrelated, a breakthrough in one area

can dramatically increase the confidence and the passion of other peacemakers … when

people do things in one part of the world, it makes other people believe that they’re not

stuck in this mindless rut of conflict’.70

68 Who, Betty Liu reported recently, has been nominated ‘for five Nobel Peace Prizes’ (sic). Cf. ‘Out of office, but still in the first division’, Financial Times, 29-30 April 2000. Carter missed out on sharing the 1978 prize because of a technicality. See, e.g., Irwin Abrams, Reflections on the First Century of the Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel Institute Research Seminar, 18 May 2000, p. 11. 69 Havel was requested to do so by the Professor Thorolf Rafto Foundation for Human Rights in Bergen which had awarded its own Rafto Prize for Human Rights to her the previous year. 70 See ‘Transcript of Clinton Remarks’ in Foreign Policy Summary, US Information Service, Oslo, 9 December 1998.

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It is, lastly, important to recognise that the real value of peace awards does not lie

in how well they compare with others in the field, or how closely they resemble the Nobel

Peace Prize. Virtually all awards provide a service to the cause of peace by honouring and

encouraging the efforts of individuals, organisations, or movements. Awarding prizes is at

the same time a way for organisations active in the cause of peace and human rights to

draw attention to their work. The objective to garner publicity and support in a noble

cause is itself a praiseworthy enterprise. Those who institute peace prizes deserve the

gratitude of a world where peace is chronically in short supply as much as do those who

become laureates.

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