When we hear the words Nobel Peace Prize winner, we imagine someone who is associated with non-violence. A person who promotes peace, and someone who brings hope and tranquillity to the world. We do not associate it with someone who is associated with civil war, drone strikes and ethnic cleansing.
The Nobel Peace Prize was started in 1901 to award individuals and organisations who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
However, certain choices for this prestigious award have not aged well. An example of this is Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea." Both nations were involved in a bitter border war between 1998-2000, which killed around ten thousand people. Later a ceasefire was signed in 2000, still, the countries remained at war until July 2018, when Mr Abiy and Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki signed a peace deal. And Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Peace Prize for this monumental effort.
However, weeks later Ahmed announced military attacks against a regional government over ideological differences. Reality is that, apart from the obvious financial benefits a peace agreement brings, Abiy and Afwerki came together under the guise of peace to isolate the TPLF, which favoured political points for the both of them. The TPLF and Eritrean government remained enemies and the border between the two not demarcated. There is still no peace between the groups who initiated the original border conflict.
It was an escalation of the tactics he used to oppress any form of dissent in various other regions of the country. He used similar violent repression tactics in Oromia, Walaita and Sidama.
Another awardee who has made choices that goes against the very spirit of the Nobel Peace prize is Aung San Suu Kyi. The State Counsellor of Myanmar and the de facto leader of the country, Aung San Suu Kyi was a vital figure in bringing democracy to a military-ruled Myanmar. She was seen as a symbol of hope and non-violent resistance throughout the world and spent almost 15 years in captivity. She is the leader of the National League for Democracy, the ruling party of Myanmar. Suu Kyi was awarded the Peace Prize in 1991 while she was under house arrest. However, since 2017 her leadership has been defined by the treatment of the Rohingya Community. She has been criticized for not stopping the mass rape, murder and genocide of the Rohingya community by the Myanmar military and associated mobs. Over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since 2016, to escape military clearance operations. She defended the actions of the same military that locked her up, at the International Court of Justice and denied allegations of their torture against Muslim minorities and women. The Buddhist majority nation Myanmar has been repressing Rohingyas since long and the denial of these atrocities by Aung San suu Kyi at ICJ has ruined her international reputation. She is now known as the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to be held accountable for henuis crimes such as rape, murder, burning of babies and the large-scale removal of an ethnic group rather than her life lonf work of promoting peace and democracy.
The most surprising addition to this list however is Barack Obama. One of the most beloved world leaders and the former President of the United States of America, Obama is widely regarded as one of the most influential people in the world and remains very popular even 4 years after his term ended. He received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people". And he was awarded this prize just 1 year into his Presidency. However, in this one year, Obama had increased the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and overseen more drone strikes than George W. Bush, his predecessor, did in his entire time at the office. So him winning an award for peace seems ironical. In his memoir “Secretary of Peace'', Geir Lundestad, the non-voting Director of the Nobel Institute and secretary for the Nobel Committee said that “the argument to award Obama the prize was only partially correct.” He also mentioned that Obama had since failed to live up to the committee’s expectations. He was at war for his entire 8 years in the office and oversaw 563 drone strikes in Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. For an awardee of the most prestigious peace prize, he waged a lot of war.
While these three individuals do not represent the entire community of Nobel Peace prize winners, they do represent the blindspots in one of the most prestigious awards in the world.
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