No real “short lists” for Nobel Prizes are announced by the awrding group, but apparently, according to this Jerusalem Post article, one man, Norwegian political scientist and peace scholar Henrik Urdal, announces his own shortlist for the Peace Prize, a list that is said to be “widely regarded.” Well, his list this year includes actors as bad as previous recipients Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger. It actually includes UNRWA, the acronym for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Although there’s one UN organization to handle refugees from throughout the world (UNHCR), UNRWA is the only UN group to handle refugees from a specific area, Palestine. And it doesn’t promote peace, but hatred and terrorism.But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The background:
Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Henrik Urdal has published a short list for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is the organization responsible for selecting the Nobel Peace Prize laureates. However, nominations may be submitted by any persons who are qualified to nominate.
Each year, PRIO’s Director presents his own shortlist for the Nobel Peace Prize. The PRIO Director’s view on potential and worthy Nobel Peace Prize laureates is widely recognized and has been offered since 2002. Urdal presents his seventh list since he began his position of director in 2017.
And some on the “short list”. I don’t know if these are actual nominees that Urdal somehow got hold of (unlikely, but there are leaks), or his own guesses about who will will—and perhaps who he thinks will win:
At the top of the list is the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, followed by the International Court of Justice, UNRWA and Philippe Lazzarini, Article 36 and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and UNESCO and the Council of Europe.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is the organization responsible for selecting the Nobel Peace Prize laureates. However, nominations may be submitted by any persons who are qualified to nominate.
. . .Urdal said regarding his top choice, “Democracy is on the ballot this year as more than half the world’s population live in a country heading to the polls, albeit not exclusively in democracies. Research shows that democratic states are more peaceful and stable. As elections are a cornerstone of democracy, election observers play a pivotal role in shaping perceptions about the legitimacy of electoral processes. A Nobel Peace Prize awarded to election observers sends a strong message about the importance of free and fair elections and their role in peace and stability.”
The ICJ was chosen for the second spot because of its ability to promote peace through international law and because of the importance of multilateral collaboration for peaceful relations from Urdel’s perspective, according to the organization’s website. PRIO mentions the Court’s decision to order Israel to “take action to prevent acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip.” It also mentions its role in March 2022 by ordering Russia to suspend military operations in Ukraine immediately.
. . . . UNRWA and its Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, were nominated due to UNRWA’s “fundamental” effort to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Urdal argues that a Nobel Prize to the agency would “send a strong message about its role in supporting the lives of millions of Palestinian women, men, and children.” This is in spite of the allegations that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 attacks as members of Hamas.
Now the International Court of Justice, which has little power to enforce its decisions, nevertheless has made some decent ones, like issuing an arrest warrant for Putin for kidnapping Ukrainian children and ordering Russia to stop military actions in Ukraine. However, should an organization to get plaudits for decisions that will never be implemented? I would think that the Nobel Peace Prize would be given to people who who actually create peace, like Nelson Mandela (co-recipient with F. W. De Clerk) and Malala Yousafzai.
But that’s not how it works. Apparently the committee often awards this prestigious prize to people for “game tries to make peace”, accounting for Prizes that went to terrorist Yasser Arafat’s prize (co-awarded to Itzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres) and Henry Kissinger (co-awarded to Lê Đức Thọ). As for why Barak Obama got a Peace Nobel, well, your guess is as good as mine. What did he even do to make peace? While Nobel Prizes in the sciences and economics have a mixed record (I know of several Medicine and Physiology prizes awarded for false discoveries), it’s not nearly as bad as the record of Peace Prizes.
At any rate, journalist and, really, anyone interested to look at the record knows that UNRWA has been complicit with Palestinian terrorism for years, allowing Hamas to put rockets on its school grounds and build tunnels under schools, teaching Palestinian children in UNRWA schools to hate Jews and glorify martyrdom, and actually employing members of Hamas as UNRWA employees. UNRWA fired several of its employees for actually participating in the October 7 massacre in Israel (they were filmed), and there are pretty good estimates that 10% or more of the 13,000 UNRWA employees actually belonged to Hamas. (The schoolbook issue is absolutely documented!). The UN is taking these allegations seriously and is conducting a thorough investigation of UNRWA, though that’s a bit like having Hamas investigate whether it actually committed terrorism. And of course in my view the actions of the International Court of Justice towards Israel—not even slapping Hamas on the wrist—are not particularly laudable.
Now is not the time to award either the Court or, especially UNRWA, a Nobel Peace Prize. I suspect Urdal’s views reflect his own sympathies rather than an assessment of reality, but who knows? At any rate, perhaps in some years they simply shouldn’t award the Nobel Peace Prize at all, as the list of Laureates is very mixed. After all, in biology you don’t get a Prize for simply thinking up a good experiment. You get it for doing experiments that advance our understanding of science. Likewise, shouldn’t Peace Prizes be awarded for people who actually bring about peace? It’s okay to wait a while to see if a group or person actually accomplishes something. After all, science prizes are often awarded years after a discovery is made—this being done to see if the discovery turned out to be both real and important.
The Peace Prize is just a popularity contest, and I say this even though a Canadian (Lester Pearson) won one. I ask you, what had Barack Obama ever done to deserve his? At least Henry Kissinger had been a career diplomat on the international scene lying abroad to serve his country, as the old saying goes.
Pro-Obama as I am, I completely agree, Leslie. Even I was like: “WTF? What did he do?”
D.A.
NYC https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
At the time Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the committee was quite explicit that they hoped that this would be a kind of aspirational award, encouraging Obama rather than rewarding him. It was not consistent with the official criteria, but I suppose the Norwegian Peace Prize Committee is free to adopt any creative variations on those criteria that it pleases. To his credit, Obama himself acknowledged that he did not really deserve it at that point.
One of the important points that one of the speakers (Sheff) made in the recent Congressional testimony was that UN agencies are not obliged to follow the host country’s curriculum in schools they operate, and often don’t (he cited Yemen as an example). UNWRA has *chosen* to follow the curriculum of Hamas in its teaching and materials. This, to me, disqualifies UNWRA from consideration for the peace prize more than the involvement of its operatives in the attack — the latter can be spun as the unauthorized acts of a few rogue individuals (even if we know they are indicative of a deeper problem), but the former shows a conscious policy decision by the organization right from the top to promote a narrative in its schools that is the antithesis of “peace”.
unlike the other prizes, the peace prize has a large list of qualified nominators
Qualified nominators
A nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is only considered valid if submitted by a person who meets certain criteria.
According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is considered valid if it is submitted by a person who falls within one of the following categories, a personal application for an award will not be considered:
Members of national assemblies and national governments (cabinet members/ministers) of sovereign states as well as current heads of state
Members of The International Court of Justice in The Hague and The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague
Members of l’Institut de Droit International
Members of the International Board of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents); directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes
Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Members of the main board of directors or its equivalent of organizations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee (proposals by current members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after 1 February)
Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Unless otherwise stated the term ‘members’ shall be understood as current (sitting) members.
Revised in April 2018
If you belong to a group of qualified nominators, you may use the online nomination form to submit your nomination.
https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/
urdal’s actions seem pretty low, i would call him a denominator
for chemistry, for example,
Who is eligible for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry?
The candidates eligible for the Chemistry Prize are those nominated by qualified persons who have received an invitation from the Nobel Committee to submit names for consideration. No one can nominate himself or herself.
[Note: You can get around the last sentence by writing a letter about yourself and giving it to a qualified person to submit.]
https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/chemistry/
The UNRWA would be a pathetic choice considering its role as a Hamas collaborator. But consideration of the UNRWA for an award reminds me that the Nobel Committee might be seeking to award a prize to a person or group who seeks to stop Israel from defending itself against Hamas. It may not be UNRWA, but it may be someone else. The Peace Prize can and seemingly has been deployed as a political statement in the past, and I don’t doubt that the Committee is seeking to do the same here. And whom better to demonize than Israel?
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is a body of the United Nations and empowered through the charter of the UN. All members of the UN are supposed to abide by the ICJ decisions.
The court which issued an arrest warrant for Putin was the International Criminal Court (ICC) was created by the Rome Statute, an international treaty. Only signatories of the Rome Statute are obliged to follow ICC rulings.
“After all, science prizes are often awarded years after a discovery is made—this being done to see if the discovery turned out to be both real and important.”
^^^I’m sticking with that. All else… no experiments to test the guesses (Feynman paraphrase)….
It’s guesses all the way down.
… forgot an exception : literature prize. Glad for that.
Seriously? This is could only come from a Norwegian with record to the “Oslo peace accords” very embarrassing imo.
We can also look forward to individuals of the global Left celebrating Hamas for its humanitarian programs. Hamas issued a statement a few weeks ago congratulating itself for the humanity displayed in its October 7 operation. As reported by JNS:
” “Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people, is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters,” Hamas stated in the 16-page document, claiming it only targeted Israeli military sites. …“We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people,” it added, saying that its members were “keen to avoid harming civilians” and that any such targeting was by accident.” ” This statement will no doubt be cited in nominations of Hamas for a Nobel Peace Prize.
JESUS! This is so bonkers.
Why not ISIS or the Taliban? Where is their nomination?
What about the Red Army Factions (Japanese or German)? At least they had style: Rengoseki-gun/R.A. hijacked a JAL plane to North Korea with (plastic, but still…) samurai swords once! Hijacking used to be a fun game until fundamentalist Islam (in 9.11) spoiled the game. Religion poisons everything. 😉
UNRWA are the PR and education arm of Hamas.
What a moral abomination these people are. It demeans us to take their positions seriously.
D.A.
NYC https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Pro-Obama as I am, I completely agree, Leslie. Even I was like: “WTF? What did he do?”
D.A.
NYC https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Amazon Rain Forest (Tours) This is something I would do if I could and probably solo.
From Google:
“When is the Best Time to Visit the Amazon? The best time to visit the Amazon is during the dry season (July – December), when water levels are low and hiking trails are excellent for explorers. Though during the rainy season (January – June), the weather is mild, and there is a better chance of spotting animals.”