Nobel Peace Prize: Does winning make a difference?
October 2, 2004 8:20pm
Associated Press WorldStream
OSLO, Norway_Each October, when the Nobel Peace Prize winner is announced, it
can bring sudden fame to a campaigner for a hitherto obscure cause or greater
dignity and respect to men or women already famous for their work.
The process will be repeated Friday when year's winner is picked from a
record 194 nominees. Among the favorites are the International Atomic Energy
Agency and its director, Mohamed ElBaradei; former UN chief weapons inspector
Hans Blix; and U.S. Senator Richard Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn, who
backed a program to curb weapons of mass destruction.
The prize is often used to encourage efforts toward peace, human rights or
democracy, and can be used to indirectly criticize governments _ in 2002, peace
prize committee member Gunnar Berge said the prize to former U.S. President
Jimmy Carter should "be interpreted as a criticism" of the Bush administration's
move to invade Iraq.
But in the end, does the decision by five little-known Norwegians make any
difference?
"That's the great question," said Irwin Abrams, one of the world's leading
experts on the prize. He said sometimes the impact is clear, other times it's
harder to see.
Many of past 15 Nobel Peace Prizes _ created by Alfred Nobel, the Swede who
invented dynamite, and first awarded in 1901 _ seem to have honored peace
efforts that then foundered, with few clear successes.
"It's not a magic wand that creates peace," said Geir Lundestad, the
non-voting secretary of the awards committee. "It's a loudspeaker and microphone
for the laureates, especially those who are lesser known. It's a door opener."
The peace processes in the Middle East, honored in 1994, and Northern
Ireland, in 1998, are in tatters. Fifteen years after his 1989 prize, Tibet's
spiritual leader the Dalai Lama remains in exile. Guatemalan Indian Rigoberta
Menchu, honored in 1992, largely faded from sight following allegations of
inaccuracy in the autobiography that helped garner the prize.
But ex-President Carter said the prize was very important.
"The Nobel Peace Prize was very helpful to me personally and to The Carter
Center and it's humanitarian projects in many nations around the world," Carter
told the AP by e-mail. "Most of our work is among the poorest, most neglected,
and needy people in about 65 nations, and had received very little public
attention. The prize brought much-needed recognition."
Lundestad, the committee secretary, said examples of successful recent
efforts were in East Timor and South Africa.
In 1996, the prize went to East Timor independence and democracy activities
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo Jose Ramos-Horta. East Timor did gain independence
from Indonesia in 1999.
"The East Timor people give us credit for their independence. Maybe too much
credit," said Lundestad. "Ramos-Hotra told me that no one (in foreign
governments) would even see them before the prize. He said he was sleeping in
railroad stations because they had no money. After the prize, they got in
anywhere."
The Dalai Lama also has said that prize made it possible for him to meet top
world leaders to argue for Tibet's freedom from China.
Along with fame comes wealth, too, since the prize includes a 10 million
kronor (?1.1 million, US$1.3 million) cash award.
The committee, appointed by Norway's parliament, seldom gives up in
highlighting a cause. It sometimes takes several Nobels before seeing any
change, such as the 24-year push for an end to South Africa's apartheid regime.
African National Congress President John Lutuli's 1960 prize followed by the
1984 prize to black South Africa Bishop Desmond Tutu, and finally, by the 1994
prize to ANC leader Nelson Mandela and then-South African President F.W de Klerk
at a time when their efforts to end apartheid risked turning into a bloodbath.
"South Africa was a good outcome," said Lundestad. "But we can't say it was
because of the peace prize because it was just one of many factors."
For the committee, two of the most heartbreaking and controversial prizes are
been for the Middle East.
The 1978 prize honored peace efforts by Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Three years later, Sadat was assassinated
by Muslim extremists, in part because of the peace with Israel. And in 1982,
Begin ordered an invasion of Lebanon; an estimated 16,000 people died in the
invasion and subsequent Israeli occupation.
Then in 1994, Israelis Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres shared the prize with
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over a peace accord secretly negotiated in
Oslo. Rabin was murdered by an Israeli extremist in 1995, and thousand have died
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since peace efforts collapsed in 2000.
Not the prize does not have effects even when the cause it honors does not
move forward. Democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 laureate, remains
under house arrest in Myanmar, also called Burma, but the prize may have
prevented the military regime from simply eliminating a troublesome opponent.
"Sure, you could just say 'OK, she's still under house arrest' ... but it put
the strong spotlight on Burma," said Dan Smith, a London-based peace researcher
and activist.
The Northern Ireland peace process, which the committee sought to nurture
with the 1998 prize to the Catholic leader John Hume and Protestant David
Trimble, is in deep trouble. But Abrams, the peace prize expert, pointed to an
earlier prize to Irish peace actvisits to stress that lack of immediate success
does not have to mean the prize does no good.
"In 1977, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan (Maguire) received the prize
for their effort to bring together the Protestants and Catholics, but this
failed," he said. "The prize made a difference for these prize winners, and
elsewhere through them, but it did not bring peace to Northern Ireland."
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