Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke

Why does the committee keep honouring people who go on to be accused of violence and repression?

For those of us who have long been suspicious of the Nobel Peace Prize, there is nothing quite like the sight of the prize committee struggling to rein in one of their former honourees. Last year, the committee gave its award to Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime minister. In the citation, it especially noted Mr Ahmed’s laudable efforts “to achieve peace and international co-operation”.

That citation might now need to be carefully edited, since Mr Ahmed has declared war on the leaders of the Tigray region, and Ethiopia looks like it is sliding into a wider conflagration. Last year’s Peace Prize recipient has this year refused all requests for dialogue and attempts to de-escalate the conflict. Some critics are even making claims of ethnic cleansing.

Yet in some ways, Mr Ahmed stands in a long and ignoble Nobel tradition. This is not the first time that the committee would appear to have backed a wrong-un. Aung San Suu Kyi was given the award in 1991. Now she is an international pariah accused of defending genocide in Burma. In 1994, the committee gave the Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat, then probably the most notorious terrorist in the world. True, this was a few years after the first “Intifada”. But having collected his gong and his Nobel loot (not the only loot Arafat managed to acquire in his criminal career), he gave it a couple of years before declaring another Intifada. Just having the gong doesn’t appear to bring about peaceful instincts. Surprising that.

A friendly observer might put this down to bad luck on the part of the Nobel committee: an over-eagerness, perhaps even a blind desire to see the best in people. But any reasonable critic would have to admit that there has been something off with the prize for years. It has become a victim of John O’sullivan’s law: all institutions that are not actually Right-wing drift Left-wards as the years go on.

In 2009, the committee famously awarded the prize to Barack Obama, before he had even completed his first year in office, despite not having achieved anything of note. But the Nobel committee seemed to want to congratulate Obama on just being Obama. In the same way that a few years ago, almost every award in the world was given to Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner, simply for being stunning and brave. If you are a Left-wing politician like Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize has become just another of those gongs you collect on your endless victory laps of the world.

By contrast, after four years in office there is absolutely zero likelihood that the politically predictable Nobel committee would – for instance – give their prize to Donald Trump. Unlike his predecessors, Trump started no wars in the Middle East or anywhere else. He avoided a few and deescalated a number of others he had inherited. Then in this last year of office, his administration has overseen an utterly historic set of normalisation agreements between Israel and many of her Arab neighbours. All without a shot being fired.

But the Norwegian committee is presumably not going to note that achievement. It would go against its very clear and boring political slant. In 2012, the committee unanimously voted for the Peace Prize to go to the European Union for its contribution to “peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”. Of course, if any international body should be given the credit for all of those things it should be Nato. But the Nobel committee would never dream of giving their award to an international body that actually did the hard work of keeping peace in Europe.

There may still be a place for the Nobel Peace Prize. But perhaps the committee could consider a couple of potential reforms to the process? The first would be to try to broaden the composition of its own committee. Take on some people with different political views.

Preferably people who can find the countries in question on a map. Diane Abbott, who this week revealed in a tweet that she thought Uighur was a place, rather than a people, for instance, would not be suitable for the job. But there are enough people on this planet with a good grasp of geopolitics and an ability to do honour to a range of people and organisations without routinely handing out the award to mid-career war criminals.

Another suggestion that the committee might like to take on board simply is not to feel under pressure to hand out the award every year. There is no reason why a peace prize should be handed out annually. Any more than the Turner Prize for art should be given out every year. Or indeed ever. If exceptional people come along after a lifetime of struggling, unostentatiously to reject violence and bring lasting peace – as David Trimble did in 1998 – then such people deserve to be honoured.

But such people do not come along every year any more than they come about every month. A failure to realise that is one reason why the Nobel is once again in the midst of a bloody pickle of its own creation.