Talk:Nobel Peace Prize

Country of IPCC?

Shouldn't the IPCC's country be listed as United Nations instead of Switzerland? The Nobel website doesn't list a country, but Wikipedia's own article on the IPCC makes no direct reference at all to Switzerland. --Tsk070 17:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree and i have already changed to UNO. Med 17:52, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I have done the same too for the International Labour Organization (1969). It's a UN organisation, despite it being located in Switzerland 80.164.88.91 (talk) 09:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

change now!

"For spreading hysteria over global warming and for hatred of President Bush"

this is at the bottom with al gore. yeah... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.106.230.196 (talk) 01:16, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Well if you've ever watched it, there's plenty of "I should've won the election" gloating going on, I'm almost wondering why they don't go ahead and change the name to the "Unnoble Bullshit Prize". Zchris87v 23:57, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Usage of "hobel_prize_medal.svg"

There seems to be confusion as to how(if?) to use this graphic: in the infobox of recipients.

Currently there is minor edit warring on various pages of people who have won (spurred by the recent Gore win), and currently there is a very inconsistent approach of how this should be represented. Many recipients do not have the image displayed and many also do.

I don't recall the history of how we arrived to the point of adding the icon after the name in the infobox, but we should at least determine its future.

Thoughts? Matt Yohe 21:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Intent of Award vs. Actual Awards

I didn't see any mention in this article of the apparent contradiction between the stated intent of the award

that it should be awarded 'to 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"

and the achievements for which it was awarded on several occasions

"Poverty awareness campaigner"

"Human rights advocate"

"for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace"

"for advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, especially women, through their pioneering microcredit work"

"for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"

Does anybody know what historical precedent is being used to award these prizes? Many of them are not consistent with the stated intent, and it would seem a worthy addition to the controversy section if anyone has more detailed information. I poked around the Nobel websites to no avail... FusionKnight 13:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

This sounds very like original research. There's bound to be tons of such commentary generated by the right wing noise machine over the coming months following Gore's award, but I'd never heard of any general problem with the criteria used up until this week. We shouldn't be hasty in using recent sources at any rate, should criticism be added. Chris Cunningham 14:07, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm just pointing out that this article states the intent of the prize quite clearly, but it doesn't explain why many of the awards have nothing to do with "fraternity between the nations", the "abolition or reduction of standing armies", or "the holding and promotion of peace congresses". There must be a reason, and I suspect following Gore's award many people are going to end up at this page looking for an answer to just that question. Does anybody know more details about how the committee awards the prize, and what specific criteria they use? It certainly seems they have exercised quite a bit of latitude over the years. I just think it should be addressed somewhere in this article (not OR, but a sourced explanation). FusionKnight 14:24, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

FusionKnight is right. That's the reason I went to the page, myself. I had recalled the "fraternity, standing armies, and peace congresses" criteria and was curious as to whether I had remembered wrong, or whether and how they were justifying it going to the cause du jour in recent times, rather than funding a new prize. In fact, I still haven't had the curiosity sated! 68.45.226.99 13:23, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Here are two links which go a little ways towards explaining the scope-creep of the prize over its lifetime. To select a couple quotes from the first Nobel Foundation page,

"The mention in the will of the "abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the holding and promotion of peace congresses" reflects the period in which the will was written. The approach today is to see it as pointing to general disarmament and the dissemination of the concept of peace. The most important provision, however, is contained in the term "fraternity between nations." This general and open provision has provided a basis for the wide definition of peace-related work which the committee has applied right from the start. The first Peace Prize, awarded in 1901, was accordingly shared between the Swiss founder of the Red Cross, Henry Dunant, and the French peace activist Frédéric Passy, one of the founders of the Interparliamentary Union. The inclusion of humanitarian work was promptly criticised as irrelevant to peace, inter alia by representatives of the peace movement. It has nevertheless remained an important criterion right up to the present."

"It is striking that although the committee based its work right from the start in 1901 on a broad range of criteria for what is relevant to peace, the struggle for human rights was for a long time not among those criteria... prizes of this kind have been controversial... Nobel himself evidently did not take it into consideration when writing his will in 1895. Nor did the committee when it began its work in 1901. It included humanitarian work, as we have seen, but not efforts aimed at human rights. The concept of human rights ... had been developed and given a special form as a cornerstone of the western world's constitutional democracies. But it had not played any part in international politics. So why did it find a place on the international political agenda after World War II? Why had the struggle for human rights not been regarded as relevant to peace before then? The main reason ... lay in the new threat posed by the twentieth century's totalitarian regimes, and more particularly in the experience of total war with ethnic cleansing and other horrors, all within the western world. This was a fundamentally new situation."

If we look at the officially printed criteria for nomination we see:

Criteria of the AFSC Nobel Peace Prize Nominating Committee:

1. The candidate’s commitment to nonviolent methods.

2. The quality of the candidate as a person and of her/his sustained contribution to peace.

3. The candidate’s work on issues of peace, justice, human dignity, and the integrity of the environment.

4. The candidate’s possession of a world view and/or global impact as opposed to a parochial concern.

Anyway, I think this is sufficient to show that there is/has been some contradiction, or at least controversy regarding Nobel's original intent and the direction in which the committee has taken it. I can try and write up a section addressing these topics, and post here on the talk page. FusionKnight 16:24, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Nominating Hitler vs. irony

Just thougt that the article somehow should reflect that Erik Brandts nomination of Hitler was one of historys most miscalculated attempts at irony and that it's quite unfair to hang him out as being pro Hitler in an encyclopedia. The real story behind the nomination began when a couple of MPs nominated Chamberlain for his adventures in Munich. Brandt who saw through der Führers intentions, and the iminent war, decided to mock Chamberlains nomination by writing a bombastic letter recommending Hitler for the prize. I've seen the letter and, reading between the lines, the meaning of it is pretty obvious. Too bad though, the public of the 1930's wasn't the the public of the 1990's, the irony was lost on some journalists, people from his own constituency and a bunch of other MPs (especially from the oppostion, hmmm relation there maybe) and there were a heated debate. The following debate was even more strange when Brandt actually was one of the most outspoken anti-nazists in the swedish parliament.

And to summarize; I think the word ironically also should be there somewhere i the region of Brandt, nominating and Hitler. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.243.206.95 (talk) 23:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

why not Hitler, while gorbachev can have that prize hitler has also right, ahh sorry gorbachev genocided muslims not jews... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.108.42.184 (talk) 01:29, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

RFC: Country data in Nobel lists closing comments

This RFC has been closed. The following was reach by consensus:

• The country data on the Nobel Foundation list is the laureate's nationality (according to the book "Nobel: The Man and His Prizes"); knowing this, there are at least a couple errors for the laureate's nationality in the Nobel Foundation's list.
• The countries/nationalities should be included in the list.
• Use common names for the countries/nationalities. All variants of Germany should simply be called Germany except for West Germany, even though there never were any laureate's from East Germany. Only one editor commented on which variant of Germany should be linked to (the current one), so it's difficult to say if there is any consensus about that aspect.

For a list of inconclusive items, please see the closing comments. –panda 20:59, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The discussion reference above appears on the talk page for the chemistry prize. Should that be used to support the appearance of the names of the countries and their flags on the page for the Nobel Peace Prize? (There was no consensus on use of flags in the Chemistry Prize discussion.) It seems remarkable that the swastika appears next to the name of Carl von Ossietzky, a victim of the Nazi regime. Is this the sort of "information" Wikipedia wants to convey? Or does it unintentionally suggest an affiliation of individual with a regime he opposed, who was incarcerated in a concentration camp by the very regime whose symbol now appears next to his name? Kablammo 13:34, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The RFC applied to all of the Nobel lists. It didn't resolve the flag issue. The choice of flag is due to WP:FLAG#Do not rewrite history: "use the historically accurate flag". See also Talk:Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine#Protection and Talk: Nobel Prize in Chemistry#Nazi-flag edit. The alternative is to use no flags, but there has not been consensus to do so. –panda 14:28, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Is there consensus to use flags? Does anyone else see the incongruity (to say the least) of placing a swastika next to an opponent of the Nazi regime? Kablammo 18:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

There's no consensus to not use flags. The de facto consensus has been to use flags since if you remove them, someone will likely place them back. See the closing comments of the RFC. If you'd prefer to see the flags removed, you can start a RFC about this. I personally don't see anything wrong with using a Nazi flag next to Carl von Ossietzky since he won the Nobel Peace Prize for criticizing Nazism, so it's highly relevant in his case. –panda 18:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. Here no purpose is served by inclusion of the image, and exactly the wrong message is conveyed by it. No one would think or infer that its presence indicated Ossietzky's opposition to Naziism; one would be more likely to infer allegiance. Kablammo 18:47, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest starting an RFC if you'd like the flags removed from the lists. You could also try discussing this with the editors who think the flags should remain (see Talk:Nobel Prize in Chemistry#Nazi-flag edit). I'm neutral. –panda 19:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a thought on Carl von Ossietzky, considering the Prize was awarded for his body of work preceding the creation of the Third Reich, perhaps the flag of the Weimar Republic would be more appropriate? Barring that, and if flags are to be kept, the description of why he was awarded the Prize needs to be improved to show that he was awarded the Prize for more than just being a pacifist journalist. Perhaps some details on the topics he covered. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 19:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

In the RFC, I actually suggested adding a column to the list for the country a laureate performed their work in but no one seemed interested. This table is different from the other lists in that there is no quotation from the Nobel Foundation's website about what the laureate was awarded for. You may want to work on adding that info, if you like. I've also added a small line about him in the Nobel Prize controversies article, in the first paragraph of the "involuntary refusals" section. –panda 19:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd quote WP:FLAG#Do not rewrite history "Where ambiguity or confusion could result, it is better to not use a flag at all, and where one is genuinely needed, use the historically accurate flag". Flags here are not "genuinely" needed, especially historical ones. You can't tell the number of stars on the US flag at icon size anyway, so, at least in this article, no one bothered to put the "historically accurate" American flag. The flag of Austria-Hungary is obscure trivia. The Nazi flag is controversial, because it is strongly associated with a particular ideology. The old Canadian Red Ensign, whichever version, is only recognizable by vexilophiles and a few history buffs. It is also pretty silly to use different flags for the same country on the same table. The purpose of allowing flag icons in tables was to save space and summarize information in the case of repeated entries. To have more than one flag for the same country essentially goes against that principle: it adds unnecessary information, and provides no uniform way of representing essentially the same entity (at least in the context of the article, borders and governments change and all that, but those issues are unrelated the recipients of Nobel prizes).--Boffob 18:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Historically accurate flags have been added to 2-3 of the lists, just not this one yet. Anyway, see my above reply if you would like to remove the flags. –panda 19:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I won't be the one to change or remove flags, but the guidelines can easily be used to justify removing all flag icons and enforcing this removal if there are perpetual edit wars over using historical vs current flags. The "Do not rewrite history" line requires flags to be "genuinely needed", and I just pointed out many reasons why they are not needed at all. This kind of edit wars almost always happens with use of the Nazi flag in non-WW2 related articles.--Boffob 19:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The WP:FLAG guidelines were also mentioned in Talk:Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine#Protection. No one has formed a consensus to remove the flags yet, however, which would, of course, end edit wars about which flag to use. –panda 19:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You may want to make a new RfC just about the flag icon issue (the old one maybe had too big a scope), and how other editors to the Nobel Prize articles would interpret WP:FLAG in this context. Maybe that would help prevent edit wars, once a concensus is presumably reached.--Boffob 19:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Another project dealing with flag icons seems to be headed in the direction of including them where allegiance is implied (military bios, indicating allegiance to a service or nationality). Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Flag_icons. That seems to make sense; use the symbol of allegiance where such allegiance is present. Here it is not; while nationality may be a useful field, a flag adds nothing to it, and can in fact be misinterpreted. That is particulary true where the flag is freighted with the symbolism of the swastika. Kablammo 19:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I agree. Flags such as those of sportspeople or miltary figures may still arguably be decorative rather than informative, but at least they are verifiable. A sportswoman may verifiably have competed for Canada, or a soldier fought for the armed forces of France, for example. I don't believe the Nobel Prizes work like this though; perhaps someone can correct me if I am wrong. Adding flag icons, if it is done, must be historically accurate. Adding flag icons to Nobel laureates looks like original research, and divisive and crufty original research at that. --John (talk) 21:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Reason for Peace Prize

The article says, "Nobel died in 1896 and did not leave an explanation for choosing peace as a prize category." Cmon wikipedia! :)

Yet on http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/biographical/articles/tagil/index.html it says, Alfred Nobel's will prescribed that the Peace Prize was to be awarded by a committee of five persons chosen by the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) and should go to the person who accomplished "the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the promotion of peace congresses."

http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/short_testamente.html part of his will "The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiology or medical works by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. 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."

http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html the full will

Zygnoda (talk) 08:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The will only states that he wanted prizes created, but it did not explain why the prizes should be created. –panda (talk) 15:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Panda. How and what do not equal why. There could be better sourcing for the section in which the sentence appears; there has long been speculation on Nobel's motives for the prize, and right now the only source cited on that point is an essay in the NYTimes. Kablammo (talk) 16:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

does it have any sense? at least not after 1991 ... a genocider took that prize( and he never refuse this claim on himself made by an ex colleague and then a president), bones of Nobel shakes... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.108.42.184 (talk) 01:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Communist Allegation/Controversies

This prize is often awarded to person who supported communism, such as Jimmy Carter and Oscar arias.. Therefore the real name for this prize should be Nobel Communist Peace Prize to suit it purpose more.. It havn't been awarded to people who really promiting peace i.e Ghandi but instead they award to these communist sympathsiers! This is why I made change to this article. 203.158.60.43 (talk) 05:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

WHERE is the prize awarded???

The article says the Peace Prize is awarded annually in Atlanta, Georgia. The prize is actually awarded in Oslo, Norway. There is NO Atlantian king in attendence!!!

63.215.29.97 (talk) 01:03, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This is silly.

I don't understand the point of having a hyperlinked image of the prize in each laureate's page next to their name. What makes this prize so special that it has placement priority over all of the other information on these pages, effectively drawing attention away from more important details, including the article itself? What makes the prize so special that only this prize is included as a hyperlinked image, and not, say, one for an Academy Award? It's not like this is a prize handed down from the heavens that distinguishes the human from the divine. This is exactly why there is a "controversy" section in this article that includes arguments about how some people should have gotten the award and others shouldn't have. " I always thought Wikipedia was starting to overload on the number of useless little attachments one could add to an article, and now I'm convinced that this hyperlinked image means things are going a bit overboard. I suggest it should be taken down, or at least moved to a more suitable place in the article and as a simple text hyperlink.