Nobel Peace Prizes ‘are being awarded illegally’

Norwegian author claims the committee behind the coveted award routinely violates the terms of Alfred Nobel’s will

By Hugh O’Shaughnessy, The Independent/UK, July 25, 2010

AP / AFP/ GETTY IMAGES

Top: Al Gore, Mother Teresa; centre: Shirin Ebadi, Lech Walesa; bottom: Yasser Arafat, Wangari Maathai. Right: Alfred Nobel

Can we have our Nobel Peace Prize back, please? We got most of our decisions wrong. We should have laid much more emphasis on abolishing the military and outlawing wars, but we didn’t. Such is the message about to go out to the more undeserving winners of one of the world’s most coveted awards.

More than half the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded since 1946 have been awarded illegally, says Fredrik Heffermehl, a Norwegian lawyer and peace activist, because they do not follow the expressed will of the millionaire inventor of dynamite. He says all but one of 10 prizes awarded since 1999 are illegitimate under Norwegian and Swedish law.

Mr Heffermehl’s verdict, which caused controversy when it was set out in his book Nobels Vilje (Nobel’s Will) published in Norwegian in 2008, is likely to stir up passionate discussion next month when Greenwood Press publishes Picking Up the Peaces: Why the Nobel Peace Prize Violates Alfred Nobel’s Will and How to Fix It.

Continues >>

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Nobel Prize
• The Nobel Peace Prize