The Nobel Peace Prize and The Real Nobel Peace Prize: A Selective History
by Jean Buskin
On Nov. 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his will with instructions that the bulk of his considerable fortune be dedicated to a fund created to award 5 prizes yearly including a peace prize “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.”1
On Jan. 12, 1991, the U.S. Senate took a roll call vote and passed the Joint Resolution to “authorize the use of United States Armed Forces” in Iraq 52-47. Senator Al Gore of Tennessee was among the Yea votes.2
On Oct. 12, 2007, then former Senator and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.3 Sometime after this prize was announced, Fredrik Heffermehl4 came of the opinion that this award, and many other Peace Prizes were not true to the legally binding clauses in Nobel’s will, He wrote articles about his disagreements with the awards and started proposing more appropriate recipients.
On Nov. 11, 2023, Heffermehl celebrated his 85th birthday as well as his book, The Real Nobel Peace Prize: A Squandered Opportunity to Abolish War.5 As well as criticism of the Nobel Foundation’s awards he considered inappropriate, he researched and made choices he thought would have been better
On Nov. 30, 2023, David Swanson, director of the peace organization World Beyond War, wrote a glowing review of the book,6 and recommended it to everyone whether experienced peace activists or not. Swanson ended his review saying, “… that Nobel understood it, as a prize meant largely to lift-up those who should be better known and to fund their under-funded work for war abolition. Of course, you could throw a dart at a phonebook, if those still exist, and find a more worthy recipient than Henry Kissinger.” Heffermehl died the following month, and in an echo of Alfred Nobel, he established a fund to award an annual Real Nobel Peace Prize.7
Despite being distressed by many of the Nobel peace prizes, I and many other FOR members were delighted by the choice of the Nobel Foundation in awarding the 2024 Peace Prize to “Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”8
I am also delighted that on Nov. 10. 2024, the first of the Real Nobel Peace Prizes from the fund endowed by Fredrik Heffermehl was awarded to David Swanson.9
Footnotes: (old-fashioned style) *
1 https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/full-text-of-alfred-nobels-will-2/
2 https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1021/vote_102_1_00002.htm
3 https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/al-gore-wins-nobel-prize-in-the-wake-of-an-inconvenient-truth
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_Heffermehl
5 https://realnobelpeace.org/
6 https://realnobelpeace.org/david-swanson-on-the-real-nobel-peace-prize/
7 See 4 above
8 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2024/press-release/
9 https://www.pressenza.com/2024/11/remarks-upon-acceptance-of-real-nobel-peace-prize/