Nobel Peace Prize 2006

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee

THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR 2006
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, divided into two equal parts, to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below. Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Micro-credit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights.

Muhammad Yunus has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into practical action for the benefit of millions of people, not only in Bangladesh, but also in many other countries. Loans to poor people without any financial security had appeared to be an impossible idea. From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty. Grameen Bank has been a source of ideas and models for the many institutions in the field of micro-credit that have sprung up around the world.

Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life. Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development.

Micro-credit has proved to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions. Economic growth and political democracy can not achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male.

Yunus’s long-term vision is to eliminate poverty in the world. That vision can not be realised by means of micro-credit alone. But Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that, in the continuing efforts to achieve it, micro-credit must play a major part.

Oslo, 13 October 2006

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee
The Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of five, appointed by the Storting (the Norwegain parliament). According to rules laid down by the Storting, election to the committee is for a six-year term, and members can be re-elected. The committee's composition reflect the relative strengths of the political parties in the Storting. Although this is not a requirement, all committee members have been Norwegian nationals. The committee elects its own chairman and deputy chairman. The Director of the Nobel Institute serves as secretary to the committee.

In 1936, in connection with the award of the Peace Prize to Carl von Ossietzky, there was a change of practice: since then, no members of the government have served on the committee. In 1977 a rule was adopted barring members of the Storting from election to the Nobel Committee, the name of which was changed from the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The Nobel Committee is completely independent. In its assessment of nominations for awards, it receives no instructions or directives. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, there must be no mention in the minutes of any Nobel Committee meetings of the contents of discussions relating to choices of candidates for the various awards, nor must any differences of opinion in committees be divulged in other ways. For that reason, committee members take no part in the public debates which follow the announcement of decisions.

All meetings of the Nobel Committee are held in a special conference room in the Nobel Institute, under an array of pictures of all individual Peace Prize Laureates.






The Norwegian Nobel Committee Members,
2006-2008

MJØS, Ole Danbolt, b. 1939.
Professor Dr.med, University of Tromsø. President of University of Tromsø, 1989-95. Various political offices, Christian People's Party. Member of the Committee since 2003. Chairman since 2003.

FURRE, Berge Ragnar, b. 1937.
Historian, Professor of Theology, University of Oslo. Parliamentary leader of Socialist Left Party (SV), 1975-76. Party Chairman of SV, 1976-83. Member of the Storting, 1973-77. Member of the Committee since 2003, Deputy Chairman since 2003.

RØNBECK, Sissel Marie, b. 1950.
Deputy Director, Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren). Chairman Social Democratic Youth (AUF) 1975-1977. Member of the Storting 1977-1993. Cabinet Minister 1979-81, 1986-89 and 1996-97. Member of the Committee since 1994.

YTTERHORN, Inger-Marie, b. 1941.
Senior political adviser to the Progress Party's parliamentary group. Member of the Storting, 1989-93. Member of the Election Law Ad hoc committee 1998-2001. Member of the Committee since 2000.

FIVE, Kaci Kullmann, b. 1951.
Self employed Advisor Public Affairs. Chairman of the Young Conservatives, 1977-79. Member of the Storting, 1981-97. Cabinet Minister for Trade, Shipping and European Affairs, 1989-90. Chairman of the Conservative Party, 1991-94. Member of the Committee since 2003.


The Secretary to the Committee and Director of the Nobel Institute is Professor Geir Lundestad, Ph.D., b. 1945.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2005 amounts to SEK 10,000,000.

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The Norwegian Nobel Institute

The Norwegian Nobel Institute was established in 1904, and moved into its present building in central Oslo, close to the royal palace, in 1905. The building, which was built in 1867, is a classic mansion house. It was bought in 1903 from consul Christian Christophersen, a prominent figure in the booming business life of Kristiania (the name of the Norwegian capital until 1924) in the 1890s. A private house consisting of two separate apartments, it had to be totally renovated inside before the Institute could start using it. By Norwegian standards in 1905, the Nobel Institute was both fashionable and expensive; at that time some people criticized the Nobel Foundation for spending too much money on a building. However, the same criticism could hardly be maintained 50, 60, or even 70 years later. Little was done to keep up appearances before 1984, when the Nobel Foundation initiated a second renovation of the whole building.

The principal duty of the Nobel Institute is to assist the Nobel Committee in the task of selecting the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and to organize the annual Nobel events in Oslo. In order to serve as a center of knowledge related to peace and international affairs in general, the Institute has built up what is today a 181,000-volume library. The literature which is available at the Nobel Institute Library is chiefly devoted to international relations. The library is open to the public and has a nice reading room. Today, the Nobel Institute also has its own research department which organizes research projects related to issues of war and peace. The department is based on a fellowship program for visiting scholars from all over the world. The Nobel Institute arranges meetings, seminars and lectures in addition to holding so-called Nobel Symposia, exchanges of views and information to which it invites distinguished specialists from many countries.

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Nomination Process

To understand the nomination process it is required to understand the structure and history of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. We have divided this chapter in the following paragraph:


A Committee of Five

Since the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, the Peace Prize has, in accordance with Alfred Nobel's will, been awarded by a committee of five, appointed by the Storting (the Norwegian Parliament), but without the committee being formally responsible to the Storting. According to rules laid down by the Storting, election to the committee is for a six-year term, and members could be re-elected.
The committee's composition reflects the relative strengths of the political parties in the Storting, but the committee has elected its own chairman and deputy chairman. It was never required by the rules and on some occasions the matter has been debated, but so far all committee members have been Norwegian nationals. In the nomination and selection process, the committee has the assistance of a secretary since the establishment of the Norwegian Nobel Institute in 1904, this person also being the institute's director, as well as of a number of permanent and ad hoc advisors.



A Political Prize

To decide who has done the most to promote peace is a highly political matter, and scarcely a matter of cool scholarly judgement. The task requires an ability and a will to view conflicts in the world community as objectively as possible while keeping a strong commitment to certain common moral and political principles. Should the members of the Nobel Committee be expected to have such qualifications? Is it possible for five individuals from a small country on the northern periphery of Europe to make decisions on the basis of some universal interpretation of peace? Isn't it more likely that their judgements would either be in accordance with the national interest of their country or divided along the same ideological lines which distinguish Norway's political parties from one another? Critical questions and protests against the decisions of the Norwegian Nobel Committee have been raised on a number of occasions since 1901. As a matter of fact, some people strongly objected to the whole idea that a Norwegian body should be given the task of awarding the peace prize. Until 1905, Norway and Sweden were in a union under a common Swedish-Norwegian king. The Norwegian parliament was increasingly dominated by national liberals who worked to further Norwegian self-governance within the union, and eventually to dissolve the union altogether. Swedish conservatives feared that the Norwegians would abuse the peace prize in their struggle for nationalistic ends.


Why a Norwegian Nobel Committee?

Alfred Nobel himself never told anybody why he didn't give a Swedish body the task of awarding the Peace Prize. Consequently we can only speculate what, in 1895, made the cosmopolitan Swede decide to give the task of selecting the peace prize committee to the Norwegian Parliament. There have been a number of suggestions: Nobel admired Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, the Norwegian patriot and leading author; the Storting was the first national legislature to vote support for the international peace movement; Nobel may have wanted to distribute the tasks related to the Nobel Prizes within the Swedish-Norwegian union. Nobel may also have feared that the highly political nature of the Peace Prize would make it a tool in power politics and thereby reduce its significance as an instrument for peace. A prize committee selected by a rather progressive parliament from a small nation on the periphery of Europe, without its own foreign policy and with only a very distant past as autonomous military power, may perhaps have been expected to be more innocent in matters of power politics than would a committee from the most powerful of the Scandinavian countries, Sweden. In his will Nobel wrote: «It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not." During the 20th century eight Scandinavians have become Peace Prize laureates. There have been five Swedes and one Dane; only two Norwegian nationals, Christian L. Lange and Fridtjof Nansen, have received the Prize. The geographical distribution of laureates would appear to reveal little or no Norwegian or Scandinavian chauvinism; on this point the Norwegian Nobel Committee may be said to have observed the provisions in Nobel's will. However, the number of Norwegians on the list of laureates is not necessarily a good indicator of the influence of national considerations on committee decisions. From a Norwegian point of view, goodwill from other nations might, especially at the beginning of the century, have been more valuable than having a large number of Norwegian laureates.


The Independence of the Committee

The committee is formally independent even of the Storting, and since 1901 it has repeatedly emphasized its independence. However, as can be seen from the composition of the committee, during the first decades it was closely linked not only to the Norwegian political establishment in general, but also to the Government. This was changed in 1936, when the prize was awarded to the German peace advocate and Jew, Carl von Ossietzky. That decision was, as expected, highly controversial and caused sharp reactions from Hitler himself. The Norwegian Foreign Minister and a former Prime Minister both had withdrawn from the Committee's discussions in order to emphasize that the award was not an act of Norwegian foreign policy. The year after, the Norwegian Storting formally decided to ban members of the Government from the Committee. A second change was made in 1977, when the Storting decided that its members should not participate in nonparliamentary committees appointed by the Storting itself. Since then the Storting has generally appointed former MPs and other people with political knowledge and experience to the Committee.



From Nomination to Ceremony

The prize awarding ceremony on December 10 is the final result of a long selection process. The rules permit a division of the prize among no more than three laureates. The Norwegian Nobel Committee bases its assessment on nominations that must be postmarked no later than 1 February each year. Later nominations are included in the following year's discussions. In recent years, the Committee has received well over 140 different nominations for the Peace Prize. (The numbers of nominating letters are much higher, since many are for the same candidates.)



Professional Advisers

Working under guidance of the committee's secretary, its permanent advisers, or advisers specially called upon for their knowledge of specific candidates, report on the nominees. Most of the work goes into reviewing the qualifications of the candidates on the committee's "shortlist", i.e. those whom it has found most suitable. The advisers do not directly evaluate nominations: that is the committee's responsibility. Neither do they normally give any explicit recommendations as to whether the prize should be awarded to certain candidates or not. However, from their descriptions of the nominees it is often possible to conclude their basic attitude. Today, the composition of the Committee's shortlist and the advisers as well as reports from earlier years, are important sources to the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. Until 1903, the committee secretary, Christian L. Lange, wrote all reports on the candidates. Only when the Norwegian Nobel Institute was established in 1904 did the secretary get assistance from permanent part-time advisers. For many years there were three such advisers, normally scholars in international law, history, and political economy. Since the 1980s, most of the Committee's four permanent advisers have been professors either in history or in political science at the University



The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided...

The announcement of the laureate's name is not made on a fixed date, but is often made on a Friday in mid-October. The announcement takes place in the Nobel Institute building and has become a major news event. The Peace Prize is awarded annually on 10 December, the day on which Alfred Nobel died in 1896. From 1905 until 1946, the actual ceremony was held at the Nobel Institute. From 1947 on, the setting was the Aula of the University of Oslo. In 1990, the event was moved to the Oslo City Hall. Unlike the prize awarding ceremony in Stockholm, it is the Chairman of the Nobel Committee, and not the King, who presents the diploma and the medal. This is meant to emphasize the independence of the Nobel Committee. The Norwegian King is present at the ceremony, however, as are the members of Government and parliament, and an invited audience. Several hundred seats are reserved for people with special reasons for wishing to attend particular ceremonies, e.g. people who have themselves been involved in the activities for which the laureate is being awarded the prize. Later the same day, the Nobel Committee hosts a banquet in honour of the laureate, with specially invited guests. As a rule, laureates deliver a so-called Nobel Lecture in connection with or shortly after the award ceremony. The lectures, and brief accounts of the ceremonies, are subsequently published in the annual book series Les Prix Nobel, both at web sites of the Nobel e-museum and that of the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

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Nominators

New nomination rules, effective from 2003. Compared to the old rules the list of nominators has been slightly expanded.

Any one of the following persons is entitled to submit proposals:

members of national assemblies and governments;

members of international courts of law;

university chancellors; university professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology;

leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs;

former Nobel Peace Prize laureates;

board members of organisations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize;

present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (committee members must present their nomination at the latest at the first committee meeting after February 1);

former advisers at the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
Observing the rules given in the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, the Committee does not publish the names of candidates.

The Nobel Peace Prize may also be accorded to institutions or associations.

The nominators are strongly requested not to publish their proposals. Proposals should be sent to:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee
Henrik Ibsens gate 51
NO-0255 OSLO
Norway.

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Nobel days in Oslo

The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony takes place on 10 December in Oslo City Hall. The ceremony is the highlight honouring every Laureate.

Some other elements of the Laureate's programme are mentioned below:



December 9

Press Conference,
with the Peace Prize Laureate at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo.



December 10


Peace Prize Ceremony
at the Oslo City Hall.
The Nobel Lectures in Peace will be given during the Ceremony.

Attendence by invitation only.



December 11

The Peace Prize Performance of the Oslo Schools
is a collaboration between the Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Oslo School authority. Oslo schools create a performance with differet peace-related themes.

Nobel Peace Prize Concert
Each year The Norwegian Nobel Committee hosts a concert in honour of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
This takes place in Oslo Spektrum.