Belarus on Friday denounced the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Belarusian human rights defender Ales Beliatski, co-winner with a repressed organization in Russia, Memorial, and a Ukrainian NGO.
>> The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Belarusian lawyer Ales Bialiatski, the Russian NGO Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine
“In recent years, decisions – and we are talking about the peace prize – have been so politicized that Alfred Nobel (founder of the eponymous prizes, editor’s note) can no longer turn in his grave.“, reacted on Twitter the spokesperson for diplomacy bBelarusianAnatoly Glaz.
Анатолий #Глаз о @NobelPrize: ⚡️Вы знаете, в последние годы ряд принципиальных решений (а мы говорим о премии мира) Нобелевского комитета настолько политизированы, что, извините, Альфред Нобель замучался переворачиваться в гробу pic.twitter.com/i7QYW1nxsa
— МИД Беларуси (@BelarusMID) October 7, 2022
A shocking and deliberately provocative statement. But yet, far from being devoid of truth. Because, since its birth, the Nobel Peace Prize has greatly evolved. In his will in 1895, Alfred Nobel, a Swedish scientist who invented dynamite, among other things, specified that this peace prize should “to reward the personality or the community having contributed the most or the best to the bringing together of peoples, to the suppression or the reduction of the standing armies, to the meeting and the propagation of progress for peace“.
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Objectives inscribed in the spirit of the time, in what international relations were like at the end of the 19th century. Alfred Nobel then had in mind the pacifist movement which was taking shape and sought to bring states together to ensure peace, international conferences as a means of settling conflicts. In line with the original testament, the promoters of peace treaties, international cooperation bodies or in favor of disarmament are therefore also rewarded. And Institutions with the same objective, such as the International Peace Bureau in 1902 and 1910, or even branches of the United Nations on several occasions as well. Not to mention also, more recently, organizations fighting against chemical, antipersonnel or nuclear weapons such as, for example, in 1997 the “International Campaign to Ban Antipersonnel Mines” and the “International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons” in 2017.
Gradually, the Nobel Committee, still located in Stockholm, will broaden the scope of the prize, for example by rewarding ongoing peace processes. The Nobel is then considered as an encouragement to continue peace efforts, whatever the past actions or the realization of the objectives. Theodore Roosevelt (1906), Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat, Yitzak Rabin (in 1994, to “honor a political action which called for great courage from both sides, and which opened up opportunities for a new development towards brotherhood in the Middle East”), Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his commitment to end the armed conflict with the Farc guerrillas. Or Barack Obama rewarded after barely a year of presidency at the head of the United States.
The Nobel Committee has also been highlighting for several years planetary causes and personal fights, such as the fight against global warming through the former American vice-president Al Gore and the IPCC. Spotlights, above all, on personalities rewarded for their contribution to human rights, to the fight against discrimination, poverty, violence…
BREAKING NEWS:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2022 #NobelPeacePrize to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties. #NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/9YBdkJpDLU— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 7, 2022
The Nobel could then become an indirect means – in the long run – of denouncing and trying to protect. We can thus think of the South African Desmond Tutu for “his contribution to bringing a solution and putting an end to apartheid”, the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for “his long non-violent fight for fundamental human rights in China”, or the Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi when she was under house arrest.
>> Nobel Peace Prize: the NGO Memorial denounces legal proceedings against her in Russia, while she is congratulated “by the whole world”
The opportunity for the Nobel Peace Prize to direct media attention towards a reality and a fight, like that of the young Pakistani Malala, in favor of the education of little girls, or the Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, who had fought against what he calls the “war on women’s bodies“, victims of rape. In 2021, journalists, Filipina, Maria Ressa, and Russian, Dmitri Mouratov, were rewarded for their fight “for freedom of expression“.
By awarding, in 2022, a Nobel Peace Prize for the “peaceful coexistence” to a Ukrainian, Russian and bBelarusianit is indeed a means and a philosophy more only as Alfred Nobel understood it from “bring peoples and nations together“, but also to highlight the journeys of those who denounce, resist, investigate, at the risk of their lives. Which is the case again this year and which definitely does not please everyone.