Not Trump: it became known who received the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize of the year

The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, including for resolving the conflict with neighboring Eritrea. Writes about this with the BBC.

Фото: Depositphotos

Abiy Ahmed has been leading the country since April 2018. The politician signed a peace agreement that put an end to the 20-year conflict over the border territories.

“Some will say that the Peace Prize was awarded to this man too early, but the Nobel Committee believes that it is now necessary to recognize the merits of Abiy Ahmed and support him,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The Nobel Committee noted "Ahmed's efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, in particular his decisive initiative aimed at resolving the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea."

The fact that the prize went to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia did not become a big sensation. The bookmakers rated his chances of winning very highly.

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Among the other most likely winners, 16-year-old eco-activist from Sweden Gretu Thunberg and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern were also named.

Peace Prize History

Since 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to a select 99 people. Nineteen times the committee did not find figures worthy of the award who, as Nobel’s will states, “did more than others for the brotherhood of nations, for the destruction or reduction of armies and for the maintenance of peaceful forums.”

The right to choose the winner of the peace prize was not given to the Swedish, but to the Norwegian committee, Alfred Nobel himself in his will. The industrialist-philanthropist did not explain his motives. According to one version, he did this because the Norwegian parliament (which elects the composition of the Nobel Committee) was the first parliament in the world to vote in support of the peace movement.

The selection of the Norwegian committee is criticized almost every year; especially when the leader or a prominent politician of a country that was involved in a severe armed conflict was elected a prize winner. Even after a peaceful settlement, every prominent politician is left with a train of the past that someone cannot forgive.

This happened with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and with the first and only President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, who is more often accused in the post-Soviet space of the collapse of the empire than thanks for the opportunity for Eastern Europe to peacefully leave the socialist camp.

US President Barack Obama, who received the Nobel Prize in the first year of his first term, on the contrary, was reproached for not having done anything in his post to earn the highest prize on the planet.

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Subsequently, the Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Geir Lundestad, who also voted for Obama, in his book called his rewarding a mistake.

The former secretary was immediately accused of violating the code of the Nobel Foundation, which requires to remain silent about the nominees and the process of selecting candidates for 50 years.

Nobel Prize for "everything good"

Probably partly because of this, in the second decade of the 21st century, either activists and human rights activists who were not vested with political power, or large organizations that were originally created for peacekeeping and humanitarian activities were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize more often.

In 2012, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union in its entirety, “for more than six decades of promoting peace and harmony, democracy and human rights in Europe.” In 2019, in light of Brexit and difficult negotiations between London and Brussels on the terms of exit, it is easy to find arguments to criticize even such a most cautious decision.

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