Today we got to start the day with a visit to the Nobel Institute. This is the organization that actually gives the Peace award (separate from the Nobel Peace Center). It was established according to the directive of Alfred Nobel's will to coordinate the consideration of nominations and to make the award. It is independent of the Norwegian government (it was actually established before Norway became independent from Sweden where the other awards are determined). Sweden has a much larger army and was more militant than Norway was, so it made sense to base the peace award in Norway inttead. An unnamed US President chose to punish the government of Norway for decisions made by the committee when he was disappointed with their recent laureate choice, but the Norwegian govn't has nothing to do with the award decisions.
Alfred Nobel came from a family of inventors. He actually invented dynamite and had patents on over 300 different inventions. He had factories across Europe. He never married and had no children. He had a long relationship with Bertha von Suttner, a peace activist, who eventually influenced him to create the Peace Prize. He very much enjoy literature and science and thus also established the 4 other Nobel prizes (awarded in Stockholm). He died in 1896. He was very wealthy and left all the money in a trust to perpetually fund the awards. The current payout is about $1 mil per award.
The building where the Institute is housed was originally owned by Sweden, but the Norwegian parliament thought it was important for it to be owned by Norway and purchased the property. This is an older picture of the building. You can see the original entrance was on the 2nd floor via a porch.
The entrance today is now through the portico here and the porch entrance has been removed.
Alfred Nobel's will established the criteria for the award as follows: "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses" in the preceding year. It cannot be award postumously, which is why Gandhi never received it (he received multiple nominations, but was assassinated in 1948).
Henrik Syse - former chair of the Nobel Peace Committee, son of a former Prime Minister, and researcher at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO). He accompanied us most of our visit and was a wealth of information. According to Alfred Nobel's will, the five members of the Peace Committee are to be selected by the Norwegian Storting (parliament). Originally, most of the members were Norwegian politicians, but parliament has changed the rules about eligibility and standing politicians cannot serve. You can serve up to two 6 year terms (if you are reappointed). There is a lot of secrecy around the work of the committee that they take very seriously. They never reveal who has been nominated (although the nominators might choose to do so). They don't ever talk about the selection process and discussions between committee members. All the meeting notes and nominations are embargoed for 50 years after an award is given.
Since everything is so hush-hush, we were of course dying to get more info. Henrik did his best to answer our questions in general without revealing confidential information. This is the room where the annual winner is announced on the Friday of the first full week of October.
The ceiling has doves on it.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, Director of the Nobel Institute. He gave us a very informative presentation about the history of the award and the vision of the Institute.
Door to the committee room where the Nobel committee meets.
We weren't allowed to take pictures of the room (its through the doorway), but I took a picture of the room from a slide deck that the director shared (see below).
This is the committee room. All of the laureates photos line the walls and Alfred Nobel is on the wall at the end of the room. The door on the back wall is the one I was looking through from the picture above.
We got a better understanding of the process from our hosts. Nominations are due in January. There are specific criteria about who can make nominations, which includes academics in the social sciences and the committee members themselves (among others). The committee begins meeting right away to review between 250-400 nominations. The committee discusses the ongoing realities in the world and the different ways that people contribute to a peaceful world. This interpretation changes over time and with different composition of members, but they are all very well educated and deeply thoughtful about how people contribute to peace. They eventually narrow their list down to a short list and ask the staff to do additional background research for them to further inform their final choice. Our host remarked "the tools of democracy are also the tools of peace", thus recent awards have focused on efforts to enhance and strengthen democracy.
Each laureate receives a medal, a cash award, and a certificate (diploma). There were a number of these framed around the building. The art is original and done by a Norwegian artist.
Kofi Annan
Barack Obama
Jimmy Carter
Al Gore
Most laureates are asked to give a Laureate address on a topic of their choice.
The Nobel Peace Center, which focuses on peace education, hosts Peace Forums with panelists who address peace-related themes.
All of the nomination materials and meeting notes are embargoed for 50 years. They are stored in a vault in the basement of the Institute. This is the vault door.
There is not any live wires in the vault. After opening the door, they take the extension cord and plug it into an outlet that is outside the vault. No risk of electrical fires inside.
Each year's materials are neatly stored on the shelves. People will see the notes for 2025 in 2075!
They have a good library collection and a small staff. They are not open to the public, so we were honored to be allowed to visit. They do make the open part of the archives available to the public upon request. You have to submit a request for particular documents related to a project.
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