Integrity Of Nobel Peace Prize Award And Other Matters

NEWS COMMENTARY ON THE INTEGRITY OF NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AWARD AND OTHER MATTERS

By: Maximus Attah, A Banker and Business Development Consultant.

The coveted Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish industrialist, Alfred Nobel. As of 2020, the Peace Prize (category) has been awarded to a total of 28 organizations and 107 individuals. An impressive 17 women have won the Nobel Peace Prize, more than any other Nobel Prize category. Aung San Suu Kyi, former Myanmar (or Burmese) democracy icon, is one of the privileged women to have won the Peace Prize. This is largely because of her many years of persecution under Myanmar’s military junta. Ms. Suu Kyi is also the second woman of Asian descent to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 after ‘Saint’ Mother Teresa of Calcutta, won the award in 1979. Upon becoming a Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi became the poster girl for democracy activists, western governments, and researchers. She shot to fame and was touted as the best example for relentless democracy activism and the fight for good and equitable governance. She later became the de facto ruler of Myanmar as the then ruling military junta succumbed to international pressure and biting economic and arms sanctions and allowed her National League for Democracy to run for elections. To give currency to the observation that a person’s sense of morality wanes as his or her power increases, the once revered Suu Kyi, now wielding the powers of the state, joined her military junta collaborators to exact retribution on the Rohingya Muslims, ‘killing’ many and displacing millions. Earlier this year, Ms. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy was toppled in a bloodless coup d’etat. The disgraced former democracy icon is currently undergoing trial with hundreds of her brutish military conspirators. Ms. Suu Kyi therefore rose from a world renowned democracy activist, got rewarded with unarguably the most coveted prize in world history to an international pariah. Turning to the African continent, Abiy Ahmed Ali, current Prime Minister of Ethiopia was awarded the enviable Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, joining the enviable league of African icons such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, both of South, Kofi Annan of Ghana, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, both of Liberia and other giants from the continent to complete the dozen Africans to have won the Peace Prize. Abiy Ahmed won the 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.” This certainly fits into the broad theme for selecting awardees, which is: “the person who in the preceding year 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. ”Recent events, however, cast doubts on the image and character of Abiy Ahmed, who after failing to hold elections that were scheduled for November 2020, blaming the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) among others, decided to fight a senseless war in the Tigray Region of his country. The war has  ‘killed’ so many innocent citizens as well as members of the Tigray People’s Liberations Front (TPLF) army who are bent on toppling the Addis Ababa government. It is worth mentioning that the Nobel Peace Prize and its recipients have not been without criticism, and Abiy Ahmed, would not be the first and last recipient to come under the radar for the wrong reasons after receiving the award.

There have been past criticisms against some of the awardees including allegations of political motivation. The awards given to Mikhail Gorbarchev, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Perez, Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama, amongst others have been heavily criticized. However, that the once torch bearer who brought peace to the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea would later turn his guns on his own kinsmen could definitely not have been predicted by even the most powerful Azande oracle from The Sudan.

In giving vent to Lord Acton’s popular cliché of “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Abiy Ahmed decided after his disastrous political rigmarole with the electoral process to fight a needless war in the Tigray Region. He has used heavy artillery fire and aerial bombardments to mute the ever increasing powers of the TPLF forces. It is even alleged that Abiy Ahmed used civilian Ethiopian Airways planes to ferry lethal weapons to the Tigray Region to help him decimate the TPLF. The poignant question is: what does the Nobel Peace Prize do to the psychology of some recipients? Does the award make monsters of recipients or some recipients simply use the cover of the coveted prize to exact vengeance on their perceived or real enemies?

The jury is out there!