Each October, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announces the Nobel Peace Prize laureate to considerable fanfare. Its choices are often controversial, and not without reason. Critics question whether the Committee’s decisions reflect the prize’s original purpose and whether political considerations have unduly influenced its selections.

This article examines those questions.

President Jimmy Carter’s 2002 Nobel Peace Prize (Photo: Adam Jones / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 2.0])

About the Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Prizes were established in accordance with the will of Alfred Nobel, a chemist and entrepreneur known in large part for inventing dynamite. The annual prizes, first awarded in 1901, were awarded in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace, with a prize in economic sciences added in 1968.

It is not entirely clear why Nobel decided to establish a peace prize. Some argue that he was concerned about his legacy, given his involvement in arms manufacturing and the military applications of several of his inventions. The Norwegian Nobel Committee asserts that Nobel’s friendship with peace activist Bertha von Suttner influenced his decision to establish the peace prize. She was awarded the peace prize in 1905.

Noble also left little in the way of instructions regarding the basis for the selection of the winner of the peace prize. His will simply stated that the prize was to be awarded, with no consideration given to nationality, to “the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” He also decided that the prize would be awarded by a committee of five persons to be selected by the Norwegian Storting, Norway’s parliament.

Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously, although candidates nominated while alive can be awarded the prize. Former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was the only person to be awarded the peace prize posthumously, in 1961.

Nominations for the peace prize can only be made by “qualified nominators” who fall into specified categories, including members of national assemblies, university professors, and persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Information about nominations is not to be disclosed for 50 years.

Obama’s acceptance speech, 2009 (Photo: White House (Pete Souza) / Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

Making war, making peace?

So what are some of the controversial aspects of decisions made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. One key question is why so many Nobel Peace Prize laureates have been heavily involved in armed conflicts.

In some cases, the prize was awarded while the recipient was actively engaged in armed conflict. We can see this regarding US presidents Theodore Roosevelt (awarded in 1906), Woodrow Wilson (1919), and Barack Obama (2009), all of whom were leading military interventions and occupations in foreign countries at the time they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. US president Jimmy Carter (2002) and US vice president Al Gore (2007) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for activities they engaged in after leaving office, but both had in the past been involved in US administrations that conducted military activities in multiple countries.

There are numerous other recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize that were in positions of leadership in large-scale armed conflict. Henry Kissinger (1973), who was a key architect for US military interventions around the world leading to millions of deaths, is perhaps most notable in this regard. Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin (1978) bore considerable responsibility for conflict in the Middle East, as did Palestine’s Yasser Arafat, and Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres (1994).

In other cases, leaders awarded the prize for peace-related activities would later go on to engage in, or express support for, armed conflict. Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi (1991) and Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed (2019) are cases in point. In other cases, people who appear to have called for military intervention have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, such as Venezuela’s María Corina Machado (2025).

Some argue that the achievements towards peace made by recipients outweigh the damage they had caused in promoting armed conflict, or that it is acceptable for flawed individuals to be awarded for their work in achieving some form of progress. But many of the cases above remain highly controversial. In the case of Obama, the awarding of the peace prize was even seen at the time as being “aspirational”, rather than an assessment of actual progress made toward peace.

Nobel Peace Prize laureates for 1994 (Photo: Saar Yaacov / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 3.0])

Peace, broadly defined

Another major issue seen in the selection of the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize is the notable divergence from the original intent behind the prize. As noted above, Nobel intended for the peace prize to be awarded to people who had done the most to improve relations among nations, to abolish or reduce standing armies, and/or establish and promote peace congresses. The criteria for the award is clearly focused on ending wars and on disarmament.

In a number of cases, this focus appears to have been followed. Individuals or organizations who have worked to end armed conflict, or to reduce armaments, such as anti-personnel landmines (1997), and nuclear weapons (2017 and 2024) could be considered appropriate recipients in this regard.

But the peace prize is more often awarded for work that may contribute to peace in a far more indirect manner. Individuals and organizations whose work deals largely with the humanitarian consequences of conflict – such as injuries and illness (1999), sexual violence (2018) and hunger (2020) – have received the peace prize. Other recipients include those working for freedom of expression (2021), and for democratic rights (2010), as well as those working against deforestation (2oo4) and the oppression of women (2023).

In response to awards of this nature, one critic asserted in 2024 that “There is no question that advocating for human rights is a good thing, or that doing so under an oppressive government is a courageous thing, or that doing so without hypocritically using violence is a wise thing. But the Nobel Peace Prize was created to support war abolition, not a random selection of good issue advocacy.” Fredrik S. Heffermehl, another long-time critic of the divergence of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize from its original intention, assessed that between 2011 and 2020 only one prize was merited in this regard.

A protest against nuclear weapons, Nobel Peace Prize torchlight procession, Oslo (Photo: Jay Dixit / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 4.0])

Western bias?

The politics of the selection of the Nobel Peace Prize winner is another point of contention. While the prize is often awarded in response to the positive work engaged in by the recipients, at times this means that the award can be interpreted as being directed against the actions of particular governments. Individuals have been awarded, for example, for their work against abuses by governments in China (2010), Iran (2003 and 2023), Russia (2021 and 2022), and Venezuela (2025). The governments of these countries are generally viewed as opposed to U.S. and Western European interests.

In recent decades, the prize has not been awarded, on the other hand, to those working against abuses by governments in countries allied with US and West European governments, such as Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates. Nor has the prize been awarded in recent decades to those working against the expansion of military arsenals in the US or Western European countries (with perhaps the exception of work against nuclear arsenals that are directed worldwide), or the numerous military interventions engaged in by those countries. On the contrary, all of the awards to US and Western European political leaders (including the European Union in 2012) have been in recognition of the positive efforts made by these individuals and institutions.

The political nature of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee may help explain this state of affairs, at least in part. Historically, the Committee has been dominated by people with backgrounds in Norwegian politics. The Committee states that “As far as possible, the composition of the Committee is to reflect the relative strengths of the political parties in the Storting”. Critics argue that, as is the case with the other Nobel Prizes, the Committee should be comprised of professionals that are experts in the field of the subject matter (peace), rather than former politicians. While Nobel’s will stipulated that the Norwegian parliament would select the Committee’s members, it seems unlikely that he intended them to be chosen from among its own members.

The Norwegian parliament (Photo: Nurtenge / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 4.0])

Secrecy and the possibility of external influence

As noted above, the disclosure of any information associated with the nomination and selection process of the Nobel Prizes is strictly prohibited. But the release by the US government in 2025 and 2026 of a large trove of court documents, emails, travel records, and other evidence related to investigations and legal cases involving US financier Jeffrey Epstein – the Epstein files – has raised questions about the degree to which this information is being protected.

Between 2009 and 2015, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee was Thorbjørn Jagland, a politician who briefly served as prime minister of Norway. After 2015, he remained on the committee as a regular member until 2020. Emails between Jagland and Epstein show that the two developed a close relationship between 2011 and 2019. They met frequently, and Jagland would sometimes spend days at a time at one of Epstein’s houses or apartments around the world. At times he would ask to use one of Epstein’s residences as a place to stay even if Epstein was not there.

It appears that during their time together, Epstein and Jagland talked about issues relating to the selection of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. In May 2012, for example, the day after Jagland stayed at Epstein’s apartment in Paris, Epstein mentioned in an email to a third-person something Jagland had apparently said about who should be the recipient for the year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Furthermore, in a 2017 email to a writer with whom he was close, Epstein claimed to know the identity of a nominee that had been shortlisted for that year’s Nobel Peace Prize. It is unclear from the email to whom he is referring, however, or whether or not Epstein received such information from Jagland.

We also do not know if Epstein attempted to influence Jagland at any stage of the decision-making process regarding the Nobel Peace Prize over the years, but it is certainly likely. An email in 2018, for example, suggests that Epstein helped an associate professor at Kuwait University who was writing to the Nobel Peace Prize committee to nominate the head of state of Kuwait for the Nobel Peace Prize for that year.

Thorbjørn Jagland (Photo: State Chancellery of Latvia / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 2.0])

In closing

Taken together, these concerns point to a peace prize that has strayed far from Alfred Nobel’s stated priorities and become entangled with political judgments. Reconsidering the composition of the Norwegian Nobel Committee would be a meaningful place to begin restoring its focus and credibility.

But reform should also prompt a broader question: whose work is the prize meant to bring into view? There are many people and organizations around the world that are working to prevent conflict, end wars, and advance disarmament. Their efforts deserve recognition. Perhaps it is time for the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize to make their names heard.

Writer: Virgil Hawkins