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Nobel prize's changing landscape

Jon Henley— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Perhaps the best indication that the peace prize makes a difference is the fact that it has managed to maintain its prestige.

THIS COULD, finally, be the year of the rock star. Or the committee could persist in its recent preference for women. It may, given the rash of natural disasters afflicting the planet, decide to honour a relief effort. Or it could recall that it is now 10 years since anyone got the gong for work on arms reduction.

The only certainty is that at 11 a.m. on October 7, when Ole Danbolt Mjos stands up in the vast second-floor salon of a mansion in Oslo to announce the winner of the Nobel peace prize for 2005, he will not please everyone.

No one knows quite why Nobel chose in his 1895 will that the annual prize for "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses" should be administered by a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. (The remaining four Nobel prizes are all decided in Stockholm.)

Whatever his reasoning, the committee members — all Norwegians with impeccable political and public service records — may nominate candidates and consider the suggestions of laureates, academics, foreign affairs and peace institutes, and parliamentarians. This year, Mr. Mjos and his colleagues mulled over 199 nominations, the highest yet.

Winners have fallen into three broad categories: peace brokers ( such as Theodore Roosevelt, in 1906, for drawing up a treaty between Russia and Japan); providers of aid (the Red Cross founder won the first prize in 1901); and campaigners for human rights, such as Amnesty International (1977) and the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi (1991).

But the committee's criteria are, gradually, changing. In a rare interview this year, Mr. Mjos acknowledged to the Washington Post that one of Nobel's grounds for nomination, the organisation of peace conferences, is "out of style." Among trends in the selection process is the "irreversible" emergence of women laureates, who have won only 12 out of 112 peace prizes awarded so far but captured the past two, awarded to the Iranian lawyer and activist Shirin Ebadi and last year's laureate, Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist.

The 2004 award was also the committee's way of signalling a new criterion, according to Mr. Mjos. "It is about how we live together, share resources ... about preserving the earth."

One of the most astute analysts of the committee is Stein Tonnesson, director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute. His three likeliest laureates for 2005 are U.S. senators Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn for their Cooperative Threat Reduction programme, which dismantles nuclear missiles and submarines to secure fissile material in the former USSR; Bono for his debt relief campaign (and/or Bob Geldof for Live 8); and the former Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari, whose NGO brokered a treaty between the Indonesian Government and the Free Aceh Movement.

Alternatively, speculation is mounting that the committee will plump for another woman activist and intellectual, in which case likely candidates may be Rebiya Kadeer, who has fought for Uighur human rights in China; Lida Yusupova, spokeswoman for the "forgotten victims" of the war in Chechnya; or Louisa Hanoun, the first woman to run for President in Algeria.

How relevant is the prize? No one would argue that receipt ends wars or secures peace and prosperity for laureates: Kim Dae-jung, the 2000 winner, is no longer President of South Korea and peace talks with North Korea are stalled; the Dalai Lama is still in exile despite winning the prize in 1989. But for many laureates, the prize has meant not only recognition but exposure, a greater capacity for fundraising, and a stronger voice. In some cases, in countries such as Burma and Iran, the award may also have guaranteed the safety of its recipients. Perhaps the best indication that the peace prize makes a difference is the fact that it has managed to maintain its prestige.

(Additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo.)

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