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.

Here are the Guinness records set this year (so far).  The ones that really get me are these:

Solving a Rubk’s cube blindfolded (the first one)
Juggling 7 objects on a unicycle
Basketball shot made backwards
World’s largest pizza
Longest underwater kiss (4 minutes, 6 seconds!)
Shortest living dog (3.6 inches!)
Most skips in one minute (374)
Most dogs in a conga line (14!)
Fastest mile run while skipping rope (5 minutes, 52 seconds)
Most consecutive items caught by a d*g (27)
Oldest living chicken (20 years, 272 days)
Fastest time to identify all national flage (3 min, 23 seconds)
Tallest rideable unicycle: 31 feet, 10 inches!)
Oldest living dog: (30 years, 243 days)
Longest beard on a living person (8 feet, 3 inches)

Of course the big lesson is that people will do all kinds of bizarre stuff in the effort to set a record. Note the huge numbers of records set by Asians!

Crikey, I forgot about the Nobel Peace Prize. But I’m delighted to announce that it couldn’t have been given to a better person. The recipient this year is an Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned for ten years for running “a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty”.  The Nobel committee made no bones about its opposition to the despotic Iranian regime, a despotism that’s particularly cruel to women, and which I highlight daily with a tweet from Masih Alinejad.

Here’s the committee’s announcement, also showing the the “Woman Life Freedom” mantra that’s become the mantra of anti-regime activists. The announcement also recognizes the “hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women.”  You can’t get more explicit than that.

More on the recipient from the Nobel committee. The second sentence is telling.

Narges Mohammadi is a woman, a human rights advocate, and a freedom fighter. Her brave struggle for freedom of expression and the right of independence has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime in Iran has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

Narges Mohammadi is still in prison.

A photo from the NYT announcement:

You can also vote at the site: something I’ve never seen in a Nobel announcement. That, of course, will send a message to Iran:

A bit from the NYT:

The closely watched announcement, made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, comes after women-led protests in Iran that convulsed the country following the death in police custody of a 22-year-old who had been arrested by the country’s morality police.

Finally Masih has the news on her site:

I congratulate Narges Mohammadi on winning the 2023 #NobelPeacePrize for her brave fight against Islamic Republic’s oppression.
This award is a slap in the face of Ali Khamenei’s regime which has declared war on its own people. Armita Geravand, 16, is in a coma after being… pic.twitter.com/CWEVsdDbq3

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 6, 2023

Will they let Mohammadi out of jail for this? I doubt it, though if they do they may deport her, as the Soviet Union did with Nobelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. But Iran can’t harbor somebody who will continue to organize opposition to the government. At least they can’t kill her now. . . .