Peace Prizes & Awards
Reformation means making changes to something with the intention of setting it back on the original path. The root of reformation is the Latin word "reformare", which means to form again or to change. Social reformers are the individual people or organizations who spends their life for betterment of society in socio-cultural, educational, economical and spiritual aspects. Peace makers are the persons, groups, or nations that tries to make harmony in human race.
There is no human being on the planet who has never experienced moments of love, moments of joy, and moments of bliss and peace at some time or the other hand the reverse phenomenon. Only when harmony has become the essential quality of human being, then only peace can be attained. The peace makers are the people or organization who have brought it to this point in human life where it has become the dominant force and the guiding light in every human life. The urge to find a solution for a social problem which can changes many lives now and then made them social reformer. In lieu of their lives, they work unconditionally for society leaving back their individual need, wishes and desires. Many a times, they have to force strong opposition, some has lost their lives while bringing betterment towards society.
Sacrificing their lives, energy, wishes, needs, desires, dreams they work for social reformation. Living Humanity heartly acknowledge their dedication in this planet earth and put together all their details in one platform to signify that these people and organization are different from rest others. While working for social reformation, they brings many positives changes in the life of human being. The impact of negativity has minimized and leads towards upliftment of lives. The positive energy surge brings many lives to reform and evolve. Their theory, actions and intention which has documented or not however clearly indicates that in different parts of world with different objectives they tries to bring the state of harmony among all life and non life forms. Their dedicated efforts still able to maintain goodness in society and love is alive.
Peace Promoters
Reformation means making changes to something with the intention of setting it back on the original path. The root of reformation is the Latin word "reformare", which means to form again or to change. Social reformers are the individual people or organizations who spends their life for betterment of society in socio-cultural, educational, economical and spiritual aspects. Peace makers are the persons, groups, or nations that tries to make harmony in human race.
There is no human being on the planet who has never experienced moments of love, moments of joy, and moments of bliss and peace at some time or the other hand the reverse phenomenon. Only when harmony has become the essential quality of human being, then only peace can be attained. The peace makers are the people or organization who have brought it to this point in human life where it has become the dominant force and the guiding light in every human life. The urge to find a solution for a social problem which can changes many lives now and then made them social reformer. In lieu of their lives, they work unconditionally for society leaving back their individual need, wishes and desires. Many a times, they have to force strong opposition, some has lost their lives while bringing betterment towards society.
Sacrificing their lives, energy, wishes, needs, desires, dreams they work for social reformation. Living Humanity heartly acknowledge their dedication in this planet earth and put together all their details in one platform to signify that these people and organization are different from rest others. While working for social reformation, they brings many positives changes in the life of human being. The impact of negativity has minimized and leads towards upliftment of lives. The positive energy surge brings many lives to reform and evolve. Their theory, actions and intention which has documented or not however clearly indicates that in different parts of world with different objectives they tries to bring the state of harmony among all life and non life forms. Their dedicated efforts still able to maintain goodness in society and love is alive.
Peace Awardees
Reformation means making changes to something with the intention of setting it back on the original path. The root of reformation is the Latin word "reformare", which means to form again or to change. Social reformers are the individual people or organizations who spends their life for betterment of society in socio-cultural, educational, economical and spiritual aspects. Peace makers are the persons, groups, or nations that tries to make harmony in human race.
There is no human being on the planet who has never experienced moments of love, moments of joy, and moments of bliss and peace at some time or the other hand the reverse phenomenon. Only when harmony has become the essential quality of human being, then only peace can be attained. The peace makers are the people or organization who have brought it to this point in human life where it has become the dominant force and the guiding light in every human life. The urge to find a solution for a social problem which can changes many lives now and then made them social reformer. In lieu of their lives, they work unconditionally for society leaving back their individual need, wishes and desires. Many a times, they have to force strong opposition, some has lost their lives while bringing betterment towards society.
Sacrificing their lives, energy, wishes, needs, desires, dreams they work for social reformation. Living Humanity heartly acknowledge their dedication in this planet earth and put together all their details in one platform to signify that these people and organization are different from rest others. While working for social reformation, they brings many positives changes in the life of human being. The impact of negativity has minimized and leads towards upliftment of lives. The positive energy surge brings many lives to reform and evolve. Their theory, actions and intention which has documented or not however clearly indicates that in different parts of world with different objectives they tries to bring the state of harmony among all life and non life forms. Their dedicated efforts still able to maintain goodness in society and love is alive.
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Prize for "PEACE" has been awarded 104 times to 141 Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 2023, 111 individuals and 30 organisations. Since the International Committee of the Red Cross has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize three times (in 1917, 1944 and 1963), and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize two times (in 1954 and 1981), there are 27 individual organisations which have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Click on the links to get more information.
Nobel Peace Prize Awardee (1901 ~ 1925)
Frédéric Passy
Nobel Peace Prize 1901
Frédéric Passy
The Nobel Peace Prize 1901
Born: 20 May 1822, Paris, France
Died: 12 June 1912, Paris, France
Residence at the time of the award: France
Role: Founder and President of first French peace society (since 1889 called Société française pour l'arbitrage entre nations)
Prize motivation: “for his lifelong work for international peace conferences, diplomacy and arbitration”
Scientist, Politician and Peace Activist
At the turn of the century, everyone agreed that Frédéric Passy was a worthy Laureate. In both age and prominence, he was the dean of the international peace movement. Both as an economist and as a politician, he maintained that free trade between independent nations promoted peace. Passy founded the first French Peace Society, which held a congress in Paris during the 1878 World Exhibition. As an independent leftist republican in the French Chamber of Deputies, he opposed France's colonial policy because it did not accord with the ideals of free trade.
Passy was also one of the founders of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an organization for cooperation between the elected representatives of different countries. Despite his age, Passy kept up his work for peace after 1901. In 1905, when the conflict over the union between Sweden and Norway peaked, Passy declared that a peaceful solution would make him a hundred times happier than when he received the Nobel Prize. And Passy saw his wish fulfilled.
Jean Henri Dunant
Nobel Peace Prize 1901
Jean-Henri Dunant was born on May 8, 1828, in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1859, while on business in northern Italy, he happened to witness the battle of Solferino between the Austrian army and French and Italian forces and helped organize emergency aid services for the many thousands wounded in the battle. Dunant never forgot this experience. In a book he published in 1862, Un Souvenir de Solférino, he proposed forming voluntary relief societies around the world to help prevent and alleviate suffering in war and peacetime. He also proposed an international agreement specifying the treatment of those wounded in war. In 1864, the year he founded the Red Cross, the first national societies and the first Geneva Convention came into being.
Having gone bankrupt because he neglected his business affairs, Dunant left Geneva in 1867. Although he spent most of the rest of his life in poverty, he continued to promote interest in the treatment of prisoners of war, the abolition of slavery, international arbitration, disarmament, and the establishment of a Jewish homeland. He died on Oct. 30, 1910, in Heiden, Switzerland.
Élie Ducommun
Nobel Peace Prize 1902
Élie Ducommun, (born Feb. 19, 1833, Geneva, Switz.—died Dec. 7, 1906, Bern), Swiss writer and editor who in 1902, with Charles-Albert Gobat, won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
After working as a magazine and newspaper editor in Geneva and Bern, Ducommun spent most of his career as general secretary of the Jura-Simplon Railway. His spare time, however, was spent on peace activities. He took an active part in the movement for European union, editing Les États-Unis d’Europe, the periodical of the International League of Peace and Freedom, founded in 1867.
In 1889 Ducommun participated in the first of the regular International Peace congresses. Two years later he became honorary general secretary of the newly founded International Peace Bureau. After 1895 he published the bureau’s Correspondance bi-mensuelle. In this period Ducommun also wrote a number of works on the peace movement.
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Charles Albert Gobat
Nobel Peace Prize 1902
Charles Albert Gobat
The Nobel Peace Prize 1902
Born: 21 May 1843, Tramelan, Switzerland
Died: 16 March 1914, Bern, Switzerland
Residence at the time of the award: Switzerland
Role: Secretary General, Inter-Parliamentary Union, Honorary Secretary, Permanent International Peace Bureau, Bern, Switzerland
Prize motivation: “for his eminently practical administration of the Inter-Parliamentary Union”
Inter-Parliamentarian and Organizer
Albert Gobat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize first and foremost for his efforts to bring popularly elected representatives from various countries together at meetings and congresses. His work as a national politician led him into international work for peace. Gobat participated in the Inter-Parliamentary Union from its beginnings in 1889. When the Inter-Parliamentary Bureau was established in Berne three years later, Gobat was chosen to be its Secretary-General. Unsalaried, he planned the conferences which the Union held each year, drew up the agendas, and drafted proposals for resolutions. He tried to set up inter-parliamentary groups in countries which had none, edited a periodical, and distributed literature about peace and arbitration.
Gobat took over as Secretary-General of the International Peace Bureau when Élie Ducommun died in 1906. This meant that he was at the same time heading the offices of both the inter-parliamentary and the popular peace movement. Gobat lived to see the International Peace Bureau honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for 1910.
William Randal Cremer
Nobel Peace Prize 1903
Sir Randal Cremer, in full Sir William Randal Cremer, (born March 18, 1838, Fareham, Hampshire, England—died July 22, 1908, London), British trade unionist and pacifist who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1903 for his advocacy of international arbitration.
In 1860 Cremer was one of the founders of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. He was secretary of the British section of the International Working Men’s Association (First International) but resigned because of a dispute with another leader. During the Franco-German War (1870–71) he formed a workingmen’s committee to advocate British neutrality. This group developed into the Workmen’s Peace Association, of which Cremer was secretary until his death. Cremer was a member of the House of Commons from 1885 to 1895 and from 1900 to 1908. He was knighted in 1907.
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Bertha von Suttner
Nobel Peace Prize 1905
Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner, née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau
The Nobel Peace Prize 1905
Born: 9 June 1843, Prague, Austrian Empire (now Czech Republic)
Died: 21 June 1914, Vienna, Austria
Residence at the time of the award: Austria
Role: Honorary President of Permanent International Peace Bureau, Berne, Switzerland, Author of Lay Down Your Arms
Prize motivation: “for her audacity to oppose the horrors of war”
Author and “Generalissimo of the Peace Movement”
Baroness Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to be awarded the Peace Prize, wrote one of the nineteenth century's most influential books, the anti-war novel “Lay Down Your Arms” (1889). The title was provocative to many, but the anti-militaristic message caught on. In the 1870s she became a close friend of Alfred Nobel's, and they corresponded for years on the subject of peace. The Peace Prize Laureate became one of the leaders of the international peace movement, and in 1891 established the Austrian Peace Society. At the male-dominated peace congresses she stood out as a liberal and forceful leader. At the beginning of the new century she was referred to as the “generalissimo of the peace movement”.
There is little doubt that von Suttner's friendship with Alfred Nobel had an impact on the contents of his will, and many give her the credit for his establishment of a peace prize. “Inform me, convince me, and then I will do something great for the movement”, Alfred Nobel said to Bertha von Suttner.
Theodore Roosevelt
Nobel Peace Prize 1906
Theodore Roosevelt, bynames Teddy Roosevelt and TR, (born October 27, 1858, New York, New York, U.S.—died January 6, 1919, Oyster Bay, New York), 26th president of the United States (1901–09) and a writer, naturalist, and soldier. He expanded the powers of the presidency and of the federal government in support of the public interest in conflicts between big business and labour and steered the nation toward an active role in world politics, particularly in Europe and Asia. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1906 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), and he secured the route and began construction of the Panama Canal (1904–14).
Louis Renault
Nobel Peace Prize 1907
Louis Renault
The Nobel Peace Prize 1907
Born: 21 May 1843, Autun, France
Died: 8 February 1918, Barbizon, France
Residence at the time of the award: France
Role: Professor International Law
Prize motivation: “for his decisive influence upon the conduct and outcome of the Hague and Geneva Conferences”
Expert in International Law and Practical Promoter of Peace
In the opinion of the lawyer Louis Renault, peace could be brought about by strengthening international law. This was a goal for which he worked untiringly all his life. He tought at the universities in Dijon and Paris, and delivered his last lecture at the age of 75, two days before he died. He was also the French Government's adviser in foreign policy and international law.
Renault was a delegate to the international conferences on transport and communications and on the rights of artists in the 1880s. But it was at the peace conferences at the Hague in 1899 and 1907 that he really gained his reputation as a brilliant lawyer with good practical sense. Renault was especially eager to extend the Geneva Convention to apply also to war at sea. He also sought to have the rights and obligations of neutral states in wartime defined in more precise terms.
Ernesto Teodoro Moneta
Nobel Peace Prize 1907
Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, (born Sept. 20, 1833, Milan, Austrian Empire [now in Italy]—died Feb. 10, 1918, Milan, Italy), Italian journalist and international activist on behalf of peace (except where Italian interests required war). He won (with Louis Renault) the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1907.
At the age of 15 Moneta participated in the Milanese insurrection of 1848 against Austrian rule, and in 1859–60 he fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi in the victorious war of liberation. In 1861 he joined the regular Italian army and fought in the Battle of Custoza in 1866. After resigning from the army, he became editor (1867–96) of Il Secolo, a democratic newspaper published in Milan.
The suffering that Moneta witnessed during his military career prompted him to seek ways to abolish war, and about 1887 he founded the Società Internazionale per la Pace: Unione Lombarda (“International Society for Peace: Lombard League”) to propagandize for disarmament, a league of nations, and settlement of international disputes by arbitration. In 1898 he founded a pacifist periodical, Vita internazionale (“International Life”). In 1906 his presidency at the International Peace Conference in Milan led to his sharing the Nobel Prize for Peace. Nevertheless, in 1911 he supported Italy’s war against Turkey on the grounds of an Italian civilizing mission in Libya, and in 1915 he advocated Italian entry into World War I to combat the imperialist designs of the Central Powers.
“My final goal as a politician is to establish an association for peace made up of Europe’s states, a league, where the dangers that come of borders are abolished, and which chases the demon envy out the door; a brotherhood that will not allow patriotism to develop into a narrow-minded nationalism, that will not allow evil and hate to blow every small misunderstanding up into a cause for war. I see true internationalism in the efforts to achieve such a goal. And I believe we are moving towards this.” (Ernesto Moneta in the newspaper Verdens Gang, 25.8.1908.)
Klas Pontus Arnoldson
Nobel Peace Prize 1908
Klas Pontus Arnoldson, (born Oct. 27, 1844, Gothenburg, Sweden—died Feb. 20, 1916, Stockholm), politician who figured prominently in solving the problems of the Norwegian-Swedish Union. He was the cowinner (with Fredrik Bajer) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1908.
Arnoldson became a railway clerk and rose to stationmaster (1871–81) but then left the railway to devote himself entirely to politics. In 1881 he was elected to the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament. A passionately devoted pacifist, Arnoldson supported the neutrality of the Nordic countries and in 1883 helped to found the Swedish Association for Peace and Conciliation.
From 1890, when the conflict between Norway and Sweden was critical, Arnoldson made use of all his powers, including his gift for inspiring oratory, in an attempt to shape public opinion in both countries in favour of a peaceful settlement. In 1905 he saw the result of his work in the mutually agreed dissolution of the union.
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Fredrik Bajer
Nobel Peace Prize 1908
Fredrik Bajer, (born April 21, 1837, Denmark—died Jan. 22, 1922, Copenhagen, Den.), Danish reformer and politician, cowinner (with Klas Pontus Arnoldson) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1908.
Bajer entered the Danish army but was discharged when it was reduced after the 1864 war with Prussia. He then started working for the emancipation of women, for the peace movement, and for Scandinavian cooperation. He was a founder of the Danish Women’s Association in 1871 and established in 1882 the Association for the Neutralization of Denmark, which was renamed the Danish Peace Association in 1885.
A left-wing liberal member of the Danish Parliament (1872–95), Bajer advocated international arbitration treaties and considerably influenced the development of the Danish neutrality policy. He was a prominent delegate to the first Scandinavian peace conference (1885) and provided great impetus for the formation of the International Peace Bureau in Bern in 1891; he was president of the Bureau until 1907.
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Auguste Marie François Beernaert
Nobel Peace Prize 1909
Auguste-Marie-François Beernaert, (born July 26, 1829, Ostend, Belgium—died October 6, 1912, Lucerne, Switzerland), Belgian-Flemish statesman and cowinner (with Paul-H.-B. d’Estournelles de Constant) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1909.
A lawyer by profession, Beernaert was elected to the Belgian Chamber of Deputies in 1873 and later served as minister of public works. He was prime minister and minister of finance from 1884 to 1894. In 1895 he was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies.
He held the post of president of the International Law Association from 1903 to 1905. He was Belgium’s first representative at The Hague peace conferences in 1899 and 1907. In 1909, when he was 80 years old, Beernaert was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Paul d'Estournelles de Constant
Nobel Peace Prize 1909
Paul-H.-B. d’Estournelles de Constant, in full Paul-Henri-Benjamin Balluat, baron de Constant de Rébecque d’Estournelles, (born Nov. 22, 1852, La Flèche, France—died May 15, 1924, Paris), French diplomat and parliamentarian who devoted most of his life to the cause of international cooperation and in 1909 was cowinner (with Auguste-Marie-François Beernaert) of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
In the French diplomatic service he reached the rank of minister plenipotentiary. Later he entered politics and was elected deputy for the Sarthe département in 1895 and reelected in 1898 and 1902. From 1904 he sat in the Senate and was reelected in 1909 and 1920. He took an active part in the interparliamentary international conferences that began in 1889 and was a member of the French delegation to the Hague peace conference of 1899, which led to the formation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. When that court seemed likely to be ignored by governments, he persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to submit to it a minor dispute between the United States and Mexico in September 1902. This example was then followed by other governments.
In 1905 he set up in Paris the Association for International Conciliation, with branches in a number of other countries. He was active in securing the summoning of the second Hague conference in 1907. His contribution to internationalism arose in large part from his work as propagandist and organizer. Among his publications are La Politique française en Tunisie (1891); La Conciliation internationale (1906); Le Rapprochement franco-allemand (1909); Pour l’aviation, 2nd ed. (1909); Les États-Unis d’Amérique (1913; America and Her Problems); and Pour la Société des Nations (1921).
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Alfred Hermann Fried
Nobel Peace Prize 1911
Alfred Hermann Fried
The Nobel Peace Prize 1911
Born: 11 November 1864, Vienna, Austria
Died: 4 May 1921, Vienna, Austria
Residence at the time of the award: Austria
Role: Journalist; Founder of Die Friedenswarte (a peace publication)
Prize motivation: “for his effort to expose and fight what he considers to be the main cause of war, namely, the anarchy in international relations”
Peace Philosopher, Publisher and Popularizer
An optimist where human development was concerned, Alfred H. Fried held that societies would gradually grow more peaceful. Politicians and friends of peace should work hard to organize the international community. That was why Fried was enthusiastic about the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague.
Fried moved to Germany and was a co-founder of the German Peace Society. But Fried's life's-work lay in publishing and writing. He collaborated for decades with the 1905 Peace Prize Laureate, the Austrian baroness Bertha von Suttner, and she was a frequent contributor to his periodicals Die Waffen Nieder! and Die Friedens-Warte. Fried himself wrote thousands of articles and published a number of works. His approach was to popularize the thoughts and opinions of experts in international law, and his goal was a new and peaceful organization of society.
Tobias Michael Carel Asser
Nobel Peace Prize 1911
Tobias Michael Carel Asser, (born April 28, 1838, Amsterdam, Neth.—died July 29, 1913, The Hague), Dutch jurist, cowinner (with Alfred Fried) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1911 for his role in the formation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the first peace conference (1899) at The Hague.
Asser was professor of commercial and private international law at the University of Amsterdam from 1862 to 1893. In 1869 Asser, along with two associates, started the Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée (“Review of International Law and of Comparative Legislation”). He was also a founder of the Institute of International Law in 1873.
In 1891 Asser prevailed upon the Dutch government to convoke the Hague Conference for the Unification of International Private Law, which first met in 1893 and later became a permanent institution, responsible, among other things, for the Hague treaties of 1902–05 concerning family law. In 1911–12 he presided over conferences for the unification of the law relating to international bills of exchange. In 1893 he became a member of the Dutch Council of State. Asser was a Netherlands delegate to the Hague peace conferences of 1899 and 1907.
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Elihu Root
Nobel Peace Prize 1912
Elihu Root, (born Feb. 15, 1845, Clinton, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 7, 1937, New York, N.Y.), American lawyer and statesman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1912.
Root received his law degree from New York University in 1867 and became a leading corporation lawyer. As U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York (1883–85) he came into close contact with Theodore Roosevelt, then a leader in New York Republican politics, and became Roosevelt’s friend and legal adviser.
As secretary of war in President William McKinley’s (and, after McKinley’s assassination, Roosevelt’s) cabinet (1899–1903), Root worked out governmental arrangements for the former Spanish areas then under U.S. control as a result of the Spanish-American War. He was the primary author of the Foraker Act (1900), which provided for civil government in Puerto Rico. He established U.S. authority in the Philippines and wrote the instructions for an American governing commission sent there in 1900. He also effected a reorganization of the U.S. Army, established the principle of rotation of officers from staff to line, and created the Army War College in 1901.
Root left the cabinet in 1904 but returned as secretary of state the following year during Roosevelt’s second term and remained until 1909. On a tour of South America (1906) he persuaded Latin-American states to participate in the Second Hague Peace Conference, and he negotiated agreements by which Japan
credit@www.btiundertook to control its immigration to the United States and to arbitrate certain kinds of disputes. With the Japanese ambassador to the United States, Takahira Kogoro, Root negotiated the Root-Takahira Agreement (1908), under whose terms Japan promised to respect the Open Door Policy in China. Root also concluded treaties of arbitration with more than 20 nations. Later, as chief counsel for the United States before the Hague Tribunal, he settled the controversy between the United States and Great Britain over the North Atlantic coast fisheries. For these and other contributions to peace and general world harmony he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
From 1909 to 1915, as a Republican senator from New York, Root sided with the William Howard Taft wing of the party. After the outbreak of World War I in Europe, he openly supported the Allies and was critical of President Woodrow Wilson’s policy of neutrality. He was a leading Republican supporter of international law and served on the commission of jurists that established the Permanent Court of International Justice (1920–21). President Warren Harding appointed him one of four U.S. delegates to the International Conference on the Limitation of Armaments (1921–22). In his later years Root worked closely with Andrew Carnegie on programs for international peace and for the advancement of science.
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Henri La Fontaine
Nobel Peace Prize 1913
Henri La Fontaine
The Nobel Peace Prize 1913
Born: 22 April 1854, Brussels, Belgium
Died: 14 May 1943, Brussels, Belgium
Residence at the time of the award: Belgium
Role: Member, Belgian Parliament (Sénateur); President, Permanent International Peace Bureau, Berne, Switzerland
Prize motivation: “for his unparalleled contribution to the organization of peaceful internationalism”
Socialist, Lawyer, Parliamentarian
Henri La Fontaine was the first socialist to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He held a doctorate in law, and in the Belgian parliament took a special interest in social policy and foreign affairs. But La Fontaine's greatest work was as an activist in the international peace movement. He was a strong champion of internationalism. He set up an institute which collected documentation from all over the world on international matters. In 1910 he also organized a world conference for international organizations. Its purpose was to create “an intellectual parliament” for humanity.
La Fontaine held high positions of trust in the peace movement. He was president of the International Peace Bureau from 1907 until his death. When he was awarded the Peace Prize in 1913, he was the effective leader of the peace movement in Europe.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Nobel Peace Prize 1919
Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The Nobel Peace Prize 1919
Born: 28 December 1856, Staunton, VA, USA
Died: 3 February 1924, Washington, D.C., USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Role: President of United States of America; Founder of the League of Nations
Prize motivation: “for his role as founder of the League of Nations”
Woodrow Wilson received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1920.
Father of the League of Nations
President Woodrow Wilson of the United States won the Peace Prize for 1919 as the leading architect behind the League of Nations. It was to ensure world peace after the slaughter of millions of people in the First World War.
After the outbreak of war in 1914, it was Wilson's policy to keep the United States out. But Germany's unrestricted submarine offensive sank American ships, and in 1917 Wilson took the United States into the war. While severely critical of those at home who opposed the war, he presented his Fourteen Points program for peace. Wilson recommended national self-government for oppressed peoples, a conciliatory attitude to losers in the war, and a league of nations to ensure post-war peace.
The peace negotiations in Paris were a disappointment to Wilson. Britain and France insisted that Germany must pay an enormous indemnity and accept the blame for the war. Subsequently the Senate refused to approve US membership of the new League of Nations. For this reason there was disagreement about Wilson in the Nobel Committee, until a majority decided to give him the Prize.
Léon Bourgeois
Nobel Peace Prize 1920
Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois
The Nobel Peace Prize 1920
Born: 21 May 1851, Paris, France
Died: 29 September 1925, Épernay, France
Residence at the time of the award: France
Role: i.a. ex-Secretary of State; President, French Parliament (Sénat); President, Conseil de la Société des Nations (Council of the League of Nations)
Prize motivation: “for his longstanding contribution to the cause of peace and justice and his prominent role in the establishment of the League of Nations”
Campaigner for a League of Nations
Léon Bourgeois took part in the Franco-German war of 1870-71, which ended in the defeat of France. He trained as a lawyer and became Chief of Police in Paris. In that position, he helped to prevent a military coup by a general who wanted to launch a revanchist war against Germany.
Bourgeois became politically active in the Republican Party. In 1895 he became Prime Minister, but resigned when he failed to gain a majority for a program to fight poverty. Bourgeois became involved in international peace work through the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. In his view, conflicts must be resolved by arbitration and an international court.
During World War I, Bourgeois drew up a proposal for a global organization that would secure peace. He wanted to give the organization greater supranational authority than US President Woodrow Wilson was willing to accept. The new League of Nations that emerged in 1919 was largely modeled on Wilson's ideas, but Bourgeois did see an international court established in the Hague.
Karl Hjalmar Branting
Nobel Peace Prize 1921
Karl Hjalmar Branting, (born Nov. 23, 1860, Stockholm, Swed.—died Feb. 24, 1925, Stockholm), Swedish statesman and pioneer of social democracy whose conciliatory international diplomacy in the first two decades of the 20th century was recognized by the award of the 1921 Nobel Prize for Peace, which he shared with Norwegian diplomat Christian Lous Lange.
After studying science in Stockholm and Uppsala, Branting in 1883 began work for the radical newspaper Tiden, becoming its editor shortly thereafter. In 1886 he assumed the editorship of the Social-Demokraten, and, when the Social Democratic Party was formed in 1889, he was prominent among its founders. After the death of activist Axel Danielsson, Branting became the leading voice of the Swedish Social Democrats. Elected to the lower chamber of the Riksdag (parliament) for the first time in 1896, he was until 1902 its only Social Democratic member. After the unilateral withdrawal of Norway from union with Sweden in 1905, together with other Socialists and Liberals, Branting played an important part in quieting Swedish revanchist sentiment.
In 1907 Branting became leader of his party, mobilizing the working classes in support of the demand for adult, equal, and direct suffrage but at the same time facilitating cooperation with progressive Liberal elements. From this tactic resulted the Liberal-Socialist coalition government of 1917, in which he was minister of finance, and a constitutional reform of 1918 that facilitated the spread of social democracy throughout Sweden. An advocate of Swedish neutrality during World War I, he was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and to the London discussions on the future of the Åland Islands (1920), over which Sweden was in conflict with Finland. He was also the first Swedish representative at the League of Nations and chairman of the Bern conference of the Second (Socialist) International (1919).
In March 1920 Branting formed Sweden’s first Social Democratic government, but elections held the following September went against him. He returned to power in September 1921, retaining office until April 1923. In October 1924 he formed a third government, but illness led to his resignation on January 25.
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Christian Lous Lange
Nobel Peace Prize 1921
Christian Lous Lange, (born Sept. 17, 1869, Stavanger, Nor.—died Dec. 11, 1938, Oslo), Norwegian peace advocate, secretary-general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (1909–33), and cowinner (with Karl Branting) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1921.
Lange graduated in languages from the University of Oslo in 1893 and in 1919 received a doctorate for a thesis on the history of internationalism. He served as secretary (1900–09) to the Nobel Committee in Oslo and was instrumental in organizing the library of the Nobel Institute, which was founded in 1904. In 1907 he was a delegate to the second peace conference at The Hague. In 1909 he became secretary-general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the conference of delegates from the legislative bodies of the world’s nations. Under his leadership it grew and prospered despite great difficulties during World War I. Lange was also active in the League of Nations as a Norwegian delegate, interesting himself particularly in disarmament. In 1932 he received the Grotius Medal of the Netherlands.
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Fridtjof Nansen
Nobel Peace Prize 1922
As Nansen grew older, he became more interested in the relations between individuals and nations. In 1905 he took a lively part in the discussion about the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden. His attitude may be summarized by his words: “Any union in which the one people is restrained in exercising its freedom is and will remain a danger.” On the establishment of the Norwegian monarchy, Nansen was appointed its first minister in London (1906–08). In 1917, during World War I, he was appointed head of a Norwegian commission to the United States and negotiated a satisfactory agreement with the U.S. government about the import of essential supplies to Norway.
At the first assembly of the League of Nations in 1920, the Norwegian delegation was headed by Nansen, who was to remain one of the outstanding members of the assembly until his death. In April 1920 the council of the League of Nations gave Nansen his first great task, appointing him high commissioner responsible for the repatriation from Russia of about 500,000 prisoners of war from the former German and Austro-Hungarian armies. The Soviet government would not recognize the League of Nations but negotiated with Nansen personally, and in September 1922 he reported to the third assembly of the League that his task was completed and that 427,886 prisoners of war had been repatriated.
In August 1921 Nansen was asked by the International Committee of the Red Cross to direct an effort to bring relief to famine-stricken Russia. He accepted, and on August 15 a conference in Geneva, at which 13 governments and 48 Red Cross organizations were represented, appointed him high commissioner of this new venture. On August 27 he concluded an agreement with the Soviet government authorizing him to open in Moscow an office of the “International Russian Relief Executive.” Nansen’s request to the League for financial assistance was turned down, but by appealing to private organizations and by addressing large public meetings he succeeded in raising the necessary funds.
On July 5, 1922, on Nansen’s initiative, an international agreement was signed in Geneva introducing the identification card for displaced persons known as the “Nansen passport.” In 1931 the Nansen International Office for Refugees was created in Geneva (after Nansen’s death); it cared mainly for anticommunist (“White”) Russians, for Armenians from Turkey, and, later, for Jews from Nazi Germany.
In 1922 Nansen was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace; he used the prize money for the furtherance of international relief work. The Nansen International Office for Refugees won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1938.
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Sir Austen Chamberlain
Nobel Peace Prize 1925
Sir Austen Chamberlain, in full Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain, (born Oct. 16, 1863, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Eng.—died March 16, 1937, London), British foreign secretary from 1924 to 1929, who helped bring about the Locarno Pact (1925), a group of treaties intended to secure peace in western Europe by eliminating the possibility of border disputes involving Germany. The pact gained for Chamberlain a share (with Vice President Charles G. Dawes of the United States) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1925.
Chamberlain, Sir Austen
Chamberlain, Sir Austen
Chamberlain, Sir Austen
Chamberlain, Sir Austen
The eldest son of the statesman Joseph Chamberlain, Austen was half brother to the future prime minister Neville Chamberlain. Entering the House of Commons in 1892, he rose to be postmaster general (1902) and chancellor of the Exchequer (1903–05). He was a strong candidate to succeed former prime minister Arthur James Balfour as Conservative Party leader (1911) but withdrew in favour of Bonar Law. During World War I, Chamberlain was secretary of state for India (1915–17) and a member of the war Cabinet (1918–19). After the war, he became chancellor of the Exchequer once more (1919–21) and lord privy seal (1921–22). From March 1921 until October 1922 he was Conservative Party leader. He then remained outside the government during the ministries of Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin (1922–24) but returned to office as foreign secretary in Baldwin’s second government (1924–29).
Pact of Locarno
Pact of Locarno
The Locarno Pact, concluded on Chamberlain’s 62nd birthday (Oct. 16, 1925) by Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, was the high point of his foreign secretaryship; he lost popularity after the failure of the Geneva Conference on naval limitations (August 1927) and the abortive and needlessly secret Anglo-French disarmament negotiations (July 1928). He left office with Stanley Baldwin’s second ministry in June 1929, returned briefly (August–October 1931) as first lord of the admiralty, and then passed the rest of his life as an elder statesman.
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Charles Gates Dawes
Nobel Peace Prize 1925
Charles G. Dawes, in full Charles Gates Dawes, (born Aug. 27, 1865, Marietta, Ohio, U.S.—died April 23, 1951, Evanston, Ill.), 30th vice president of the United States (1925–29) in the Republican administration of President Calvin Coolidge. An ambassador and author of the “Dawes Plan” for managing Germany’s reparations payments after World War I, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace jointly with Sir Austen Chamberlain in 1925.
Dawes was the son of General Rufus R. Dawes, a Union officer during the American Civil War and later a member of Congress, and Mary Beman Gates. Educated at Marietta College in Ohio and Cincinnati Law School, Dawes practiced law in Lincoln, Nebraska (1887–94), and then moved to Evanston, Illinois, which he made his permanent home. He was appointed United States comptroller of the currency in 1897 but resigned to contest (unsuccessfully) the Republican Party nomination for a United States Senate seat in 1901. He then turned to private business and banking and organized the Central Trust Company of Illinois. During World War I, Dawes was head of supply procurement for the American Expeditionary Force in France. After his resignation as a brigadier general in 1919, he was appointed by President Warren G. Harding as the first director of the budget in 1921.
In 1923 Dawes was appointed by the Allied Reparations Commission to plan a solution for the problem of Germany’s inability to pay reparations for its liability for World War I as set forth in the Treaty of Versailles. Dawes presided over a committee of experts that submitted a plan in 1924 providing for a reorganization of German finances with the assistance of loans from American investors. The Dawes Plan saved Europe from economic collapse for a few years, but it proved to be only a partial solution for the dilemma of world economic disorganization.
After he was selected as Coolidge’s vice-presidential running mate in 1924, he campaigned against the Ku Klux Klan and supported limits on the use of the filibuster in the Senate. As vice president he favoured the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which attempted to eliminate war as an instrument of foreign policy. He declined to seek the presidency in 1928 and was appointed ambassador to Great Britain (1929–32) by Herbert Hoover. During the Great Depression he returned to the United States (1932) to direct the Reconstruction Finance Corporation but resigned the same year to reenter the banking business.
Dawes was the author of several works, including A Journal of the Great War (1921), Notes as Vice President (1935), and A Journal of Reparations (1939). A self-taught musician, he composed Melody in A Major (1912), an instrumental piece for violin that, with the addition of lyrics by Carl Sigman, became the pop standard “It’s All in the Game” (1951).
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Nobel Peace Prize Awardee (1926 ~ 1950)
Aristide Briand
Nobel Peace Prize 1926
Aristide Pierre Henri Briand (French: [aʁistid pjɛʁ ɑ̃ʁi bʁijɑ̃]; 28 March 1862 – 7 March 1932) was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic. He is mainly remembered for his focus on international issues and reconciliation politics during the interwar period (1918–1939).
In 1926, he received the Nobel Peace Prize along with German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann for the realization of the Locarno Treaties, which aimed at reconciliation between France and Germany after the First World War.[1][2] To avoid another worldwide conflict, he was instrumental in the agreement known as the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928, as well to establish a "European Union" in 1929.[3] However, all his efforts were compromised by the rise of nationalistic and revanchist ideas like Nazism and fascism following the Great Depression.
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Gustav Stresemann
Nobel Peace Prize 1926
Gustav Stresemann
The Nobel Peace Prize 1926
Born: 10 May 1878, Berlin, Germany
Died: 3 October 1929, Berlin, Germany
Residence at the time of the award: Germany
Role: ex-Lord High Chancellor (Reichs-kanzler); Foreign Minister; Part-originator of Locarno Pact
Prize motivation: “for their crucial role in bringing about the Locarno Treaty”
For Franco-German Reconciliation
The German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann shared the Peace Prize for 1926 with the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. They were honored for having signed an agreement of reconciliation between their two countries in the Swiss town of Locarno in 1925.
Before entering politics and becoming Foreign Minister, Stresemann had studied literature, history and economics and worked in business. In 1907 he was elected to the German Reichstag. In the field of foreign policy, he stood out as an eager imperialist who demanded “a place in the sun” for Germany.
During World War I, he supported Germany's annexation of territories from neighboring countries. But with the war going badly, he believed that Germany should sue for peace. He was shocked at the harsh terms accorded Germany at the peace negotiations in 1919, but opposed the idea that Germany should sabotage the peace treaty. Stresemann was Prime Minister for a short time in 1923, before as Foreign Minister initiating reconciliation with France.
Ferdinand Buisson
Nobel Peace Prize 1927
Ferdinand Buisson
The Nobel Peace Prize 1927
Born: 20 December 1841, Paris, France
Died: 16 February 1932, Thieuloy-Saint-Antoine, France
Residence at the time of the award: France
Role: Formerly Professor, Sorbonne University, Paris; Founder and President, Ligue des Droits de l'Homme (League for Human Rights)
Prize motivation: “for their contribution to the emergence in France and Germany of a public opinion which favours peaceful international cooperation”
For Human Rights and Franco-German Reconciliation
Ferdinand Buisson grew up under the nineteenth-century dictatorship of Emperor Napoleon III. He studied philosophy and pedagogy, and moved to Switzerland so as to be able to work, think, and write freely. All his life he was committed to the advancement of democracy and human rights.
After the Franco-German war of 1870-71 and the Emperor's fall, Buisson returned to France, where he became professor of pedagogy at the Sorbonne. He took a stand against the anti-Semitism in French society, and in 1902 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Radical Socialists. There he also became a spokesman for women's suffrage.
In World War I, Buisson denounced Germany as the aggressor, but was strongly opposed to the harsh treatment to which it was subjected after the war. He feared it would lay the foundations for a revanchist war on Germany's part, and arranged meetings aimed at Franco-German reconciliation. This work gained him the Peace Prize together with the German Ludwig Quidde.
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Ludwig Quidde
Nobel Peace Prize 1927
Ludwig Quidde
The Nobel Peace Prize 1927
Born: 23 March 1858, Bremen, Germany
Died: 4 March 1941, Geneva, Switzerland
Residence at the time of the award: Germany
Role: Professor, Berlin University; Member, German Parliament; Participant of various peace conferences
Prize motivation: “for their contribution to the emergence in France and Germany of a public opinion which favours peaceful international cooperation”
Opposed German War Policy
Ludwig Quidde was awarded the Peace Prize in 1927 for his lifelong work in the cause of peace. He shared the Prize with the Frenchman Ferdinand Buisson.
Quidde had a doctorate in history, but received no official appointments because of his opposition to the German Kaiser. He became a member of the International Peace Bureau, and endeavored to reduce the hostility between Germany and France after the Franco-German war in 1870-71.
In 1907 he was elected to the German Reichstag, and later became president of the German Peace Society. During World War I he spoke against Germany's annexation of territory from neighboring countries, and as a result he was placed under political surveillance. Quidde was disappointed at the harsh treatment of Germany after the war, but continued to work against rearmament and German revanchism. When Hitler came to power, he fled to Switzerland, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Frank Billings Kellogg
Nobel Peace Prize 1929
Frank Billings Kellogg
The Nobel Peace Prize 1929
Born: 22 December 1856, Potsdam, NY, USA
Died: 21 December 1937, St. Paul, MN, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Role: ex-Secretary of State; Part-originator of Briand-Kellogg Pact
Prize motivation: “for his crucial role in bringing about the Briand-Kellogg Pact”
Frank Billings Kellogg received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1930.
A Plan for World Peace
The US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg was awarded the Peace Prize for having been one of the initiators of the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928. Almost all the world's states signed this pact, which prohibited wars of aggression. The original initiative came from the French Foreign Minister and Peace Prize Laureate Aristide Briand. He had sought a Franco-American agreement which would keep France secure from German revanchism after Germany's defeat in World War I. The United States was not interested, so Kellogg proposed a more extensive but looser pact. In addition, he demanded exceptions, to prevent harm to US interests on the American continent. This led to disagreement in the Nobel Committee, until a majority decided to award Kellogg the Peace Prize.
Beginning in modest circumstances, Frank Kellogg achieved wealth as a star lawyer. In 1917 he was elected to the Senate for the Republicans. After World War I he was US Ambassador to Great Britain until he was appointed Secretary of State.
Lars Olof Jonathan Söderblom
Nobel Peace Prize 1930
Söderblom was born in the village of Trönö in Söderhamn Municipality, Gävleborg County. His father was a parish priest. He enrolled at Uppsala University in 1883. Although not initially convinced what he wanted to study, he eventually decided to follow in his father's footsteps. On returning from a journey to the U.S., he was ordained priest in 1893. During the years 1892 and 1893, Söderblom was first vice president and then president of the Uppsala Student Union.[2]
From 1894 until 1901, he held a ministry at the Swedish Embassy in Paris, where his congregation included both Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) and August Strindberg (1849–1912). In 1897, he conducted the memorial service following the death of Alfred Nobel. From 1901 to 1914, Söderblom held a chair in the School of Theology at Uppsala University and from 1912 to 1914 was also a professor of Religious studies at Leipzig University. In 1914, he was elected as Archbishop of Uppsala, the head of the Lutheran church in Sweden. During the First World War, he called on all Christian leaders to work for peace and justice while working to alleviate the conditions of prisoners of war and refugees.[
He believed that church unity had the specific purpose of presenting the gospel to the world and that the messages of Jesus were relevant to social life. His leadership of the Christian "Life and Work" movement in the 1920s has led him to be recognised as one of the principal founders of the ecumenical movement. He had begun the movement toward intercommunion between the Church of Sweden and the Church of England and was a close associate of the English ecumenist George Bell (1883–1958), Dean of Canterbury, Bishop of Chichester. He was instrumental in chairing the World Conference of Life and Work in Stockholm, in 1925. In 1930 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Jane Addams
Nobel Peace Prize 1931
Jane Addams, (born September 6, 1860, Cedarville, Illinois, U.S.—died May 21, 1935, Chicago, Illinois), American social reformer and pacifist, cowinner (with Nicholas Murray Butler) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1931. She is probably best known as a cofounder of Hull House in Chicago, one of the first social settlements in North America.
Addams graduated from Rockford Female Seminary in Illinois in 1881 and was granted a degree the following year when the institution became Rockford College. Following the death of her father in 1881, her own health problems, and an unhappy year at the Woman’s Medical College, Philadelphia, she was an invalid for two years. During neither subsequent travel in Europe in 1883–85 nor her stay in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1885–87 did she find a vocation.
Julia Lathrop, Jane Addams, and Mary McDowell
Julia Lathrop, Jane Addams, and Mary McDowell
In 1887–88 Addams returned to Europe with a Rockford classmate, Ellen Gates Starr. On a visit to the Toynbee Hall settlement house (founded 1884) in the Whitechapel industrial district in London, Addams’s vague leanings toward reform work crystallized. Upon returning to the United States, she and Starr determined to create something like Toynbee Hall. In a working-class immigrant district in Chicago, they acquired a large vacant residence built by Charles Hull in 1856, and, calling it Hull House, they moved into it on September 18, 1889. Eventually the settlement included 13 buildings and a playground, as well as a camp near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Many prominent social workers and reformers—Julia Lathrop, Florence Kelley, and Grace and Edith Abbott—came to live at Hull House, as did others who continued to make their living in business or the arts while helping Addams in settlement activities.
Jane Addams
Jane Addams
Among the facilities at Hull House were a day nursery, a gymnasium, a community kitchen, and a boarding club for working girls. Hull House offered college-level courses in various subjects, furnished training in art, music, and crafts such as bookbinding, and sponsored one of the earliest little-theatre groups, the Hull House Players. In addition to making available services and cultural opportunities for the largely immigrant population of the neighbourhood, Hull House afforded an opportunity for young social workers to acquire training.
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Jane Addams, and Alice Thacher Post
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Jane Addams, and Alice Thacher Post
Jane Addams
Jane Addams
Addams worked with labour as well as other reform groups toward goals including the first juvenile-court law, tenement-house regulation, an eight-hour working day for women, factory inspection, and workers’ compensation. She strove, in addition, for justice for immigrants and African Americans, advocated research aimed at determining the causes of poverty and crime, and supported women’s suffrage. In 1910 she became the first woman president of the National Conference of Social Work, and in 1912 she played an active part in the Progressive Party’s presidential campaign for Theodore Roosevelt. At The Hague in 1915 she served as chairman of the International Congress of Women, following which was established the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She was also involved in the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. In 1931 she was a cowinner of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Chicago: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Chicago: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
The establishment of the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois in 1963 forced the Hull House Association to relocate its headquarters. The majority of its original buildings were demolished, but the Hull residence itself was preserved as a monument to Jane Addams.
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Among Addams’s books are Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), and The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (1930).
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Nicholas Murray Butler
Nobel Peace Prize 1931
Nicholas Murray Butler
The Nobel Peace Prize 1931
Born: 2 April 1862, Elizabeth, NJ, USA
Died: 7 December 1947, New York, NY, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Role: President, Columbia University; Promoter of Briand Kellogg Pact
Prize motivation: “for their assiduous effort to revive the ideal of peace and to rekindle the spirit of peace in their own nation and in the whole of mankind”
Top-Flight Peace Activist
Nicholas Butler shared the Peace Prize for 1931 with Jane Addams. He received it for his efforts to strengthen international law and the International Court at the Hague.
Butler studied both in France and in Germany. He became a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and later of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1902 he became President of Columbia University.
Butler participated in peace conferences and established contacts with several Peace Prize Laureates. During World War I he broke off his connections with Germany and was a warm supporter of United States entry into the war. In 1919 he opposed US entry into the new League of Nations, fearing that America's hands would be tied at the expense of national interests.
In 1925, Butler became President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In his opinion, peace could only be achieved by an elite. Butler had close contacts with Europe's leading statesmen, and supported the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, enabling the signing of the Briand-Kellogg Pact forbidding wars of aggression in 1928.
Sir Norman Angell
Nobel Peace Prize 1933
Sir Norman Angell, original name Ralph Norman Angell-Lane, (born December 26, 1873, Holbeach, Lincolnshire, England—died October 7, 1967, Croydon, Surrey), English economist and worker for international peace, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1933.
After an education in France, London, and Geneva, Angell spent several years (1890–98) in the United States, working as a cowboy, a prospector, and finally a journalist for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and San Francisco Chronicle. Upon his return to Europe, other editorial posts followed, notably editorship of Galignani’s Messenger (1899–1903) and Foreign Affairs (1928–31).
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Angell’s most famous work, The Great Illusion (1910), translated into more than a score of languages, tried to establish the fallacy of the idea that conquest and war brought a nation great economic advantage and ensured its living space and access to markets, trade, and raw materials. The Great Illusion, 1933 (1933) explored the economic developments and ideas of the 23 years since publication of the first edition. Angell’s literary output was great, producing sometimes more than one book a year. He also invented the Money Game, a series of card games using paper money to teach the fundamentals of currency and credit.
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Arthur Henderson
Nobel Peace Prize 1934
Arthur Henderson, (born September 13, 1863, Glasgow, Scotland—died October 20, 1935, London, England), one of the chief organizers of the British Labour Party. He was Britain’s secretary of state for foreign affairs from June 1929 to August 1931 and won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1934.
An iron molder at Robert Stephenson’s locomotive works and foundry in Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, Henderson became secretary of the Newcastle local of the Ironfounders’ Union, served as a Liberal Party member of the municipal councils of Newcastle, Darlington, and Durham, and in 1903 was elected mayor of Darlington. Later that year he was sent to the House of Commons as a Labour Party member from Barnard Castle Division, Durham, in what was the first electoral victory of a Labourite over candidates from both the Conservative and Liberal parties. Although never an outstanding orator, he was chief party whip in the Commons in 1914, 1921–23, and 1925–27. In 1908–10 and 1914–17 he was chairman of the Labour Party, and from 1911 to 1934 he held the more demanding office of party secretary.
In August 1914 Henderson, with the majority of the Labour members of the Commons, expressed support for the British effort in World War I. He thereupon took over the party’s parliamentary leadership from Ramsay MacDonald, who then headed the Labourites’ pacifist minority. In H.H. Asquith’s wartime coalition government of May 1915–December 1916, Henderson first was president of the Board of Education and later became paymaster general and governmental adviser on labour matters. When David Lloyd George succeeded Asquith, Henderson, who had lined up Labour behind the new prime minister, became a minister without portfolio in the five-man war cabinet. In the summer of 1917 he visited Russia and accepted the plan of Aleksandr Kerensky’s revolutionary provisional government for an international Socialist conference in Stockholm. At first Lloyd George seemed to favour the idea, but he later changed his mind and Henderson resigned from the cabinet (August 12).
During 1918 Henderson devoted his energies to the party secretaryship. With the Socialist reformer Sidney Webb he largely wrote the party constitution, which made Labour for the first time an avowed Socialist party with effective constituency organizations. Six years later, when Labour held power for the first time (January–November 1924), Henderson served as home secretary under MacDonald.
As foreign secretary in MacDonald’s second Labour ministry, he strongly supported the League of Nations, and in May 1931 he was chosen to head the World Disarmament Conference, which was to meet in Geneva intermittently from February 1932. He resigned as foreign secretary when MacDonald formed a national coalition government in August 1931. By that time he was fully occupied with disarmament work (for which he was to receive the Nobel Prize). His last important service was performed in July 1933, when he visited Paris, Rome, Berlin, Prague, and Munich (where he met Adolf Hitler) to promote an armament limitation plan.
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Carl von Ossietzky
Nobel Peace Prize 1935
Carl von Ossietzky, (born Oct. 3, 1889, Hamburg, Ger.—died May 4, 1938, Berlin), German journalist and pacifist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace for 1935.
Carl von Ossietzky (centre), with human rights activists and lawyers, shortly before beginning his prison sentence in 1932.
Carl von Ossietzky (centre), with human rights activists and lawyers, shortly before beginning his prison sentence in 1932.
In 1912 Ossietzky joined the German Peace Society but was conscripted into the army and served throughout World War I. In 1920 he became the society’s secretary in Berlin. Ossietzky helped to found the Nie Wieder Krieg (No More War) organization in 1922 and became editor of the Weltbühne, a liberal political weekly, in 1927, where in a series of articles he unmasked the Reichswehr (German army) leaders’ secret preparations for rearmament. Accused of treason, Ossietzky was sentenced in November 1931 to 18 months’ imprisonment but was granted amnesty in December 1932.
Carl von Ossietzky at the Esterwegen-Papenburg concentration camp in Germany, 1935.
Carl von Ossietzky at the Esterwegen-Papenburg concentration camp in Germany, 1935.
Ossietzky opposed German militarism and political extremism of both the left and the right. By the time Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Ossietzky had resumed his editorship, in which he uncompromisingly attacked the Nazis. Steadfastly refusing to flee Germany, he was arrested on Feb. 28, 1933, and sent to Esterwegen-Papenburg concentration camp. After enduring three years of incarceration and torture in the camp, Ossietzky was transferred in May 1936 to a prison hospital in Berlin by the German government, which was growing alarmed at the international publicity his case had begun to attract.
Carl von Ossietzky monument, Berlin.
Carl von Ossietzky monument, Berlin.
On Nov. 24, 1936, Ossietzky was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for 1935. The award was interpreted as an expression of worldwide censure of Nazism. Hitler’s reply was a decree forbidding Germans to accept any Nobel Prize. Though not allowed to leave Germany, Ossietzky was permitted to move to a private sanatorium where, his health broken, he died of illness.
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Carlos Saavedra Lamas
Nobel Peace Prize 1936
Carlos Saavedra Lamas, (born Nov. 1, 1878, Buenos Aires, Arg.—died May 5, 1959, Buenos Aires), Argentine jurist who in 1936 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his part in ending the Chaco War (1932–35), fought between Bolivia and Paraguay over the northern part of the Gran Chaco region and especially its oil fields.
Educated in law, Saavedra Lamas taught at the National University of La Plata and at the University of Buenos Aires, of which he was rector from 1941 to 1943. In 1915 he became Argentinian minister of justice and of public education, and from 1932 to 1938 he served as minister of foreign affairs. Between October 1933 and June 1934 the United States, Italy, and 14 Latin-American nations signed an antiwar treaty prepared by Saavedra Lamas.
Saavedra Lamas was president of the International Labour Congress, Geneva (1928); the Pan-American Conference, Buenos Aires (1936); and the League of Nations Assembly (1936). He also wrote several books on international law and peacekeeping, economics, and education.
He organized and presided over the international mediation committee (Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and the United States) that secured an armistice (June 12, 1935) in the Chaco War. Subsequently he was prominent in negotiations resulting in a permanent peace agreement (July 21, 1938).
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Robert Cecil
Nobel Peace Prize 1937
Robert Cecil, 1st earl of Salisbury, also called (1591–1603) Sir Robert Cecil, or (from 1603) Baron Cecil of Essendon, or (from 1604) Viscount Cranborne, (born June 1, 1563, London—died May 24, 1612, Marlborough, Wiltshire, Eng.), English statesman who succeeded his father, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Queen Elizabeth I’s chief minister in 1598 and skillfully directed the government during the first nine years of the reign of King James I. Cecil gave continuity to the change from Tudor to Stuart rule in England.
Trained by his father in the craft of statesmanship, he entered the House of Commons in 1584 and in 1588 was sent on his first diplomatic mission abroad. After the death of Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state, Francis Walsingham, in 1590, Cecil gradually took over the work of secretary of state, although he was not formally appointed to the office until July 1596.
During this period Cecil’s chief rival for power was the Queen’s favourite, Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex. After Essex was executed in 1601 for rebelling against the Queen, Cecil felt free to initiate secret correspondence with King James VI of Scotland, advising the King on ways to cultivate Elizabeth’s favour. As a result of his efforts, the succession, upon Elizabeth’s death, passed without incident to James, who maintained Cecil as his secretary of state. He was made Viscount Cranborne in 1604 and earl of Salisbury in 1605.
In pursuing the policies worked out by his father and Queen Elizabeth, Cecil followed a moderately anti-Roman Catholic, anti-Spanish, and anti-Puritan line. In 1604 he negotiated a peace ending the 19-year war with Spain, but he supported the Dutch in their rebellion against the Spanish. When the 12-year truce between Spain and the Dutch was arranged in 1609, Cecil aligned his nation with France in guaranteeing that Spain would not violate the agreement.
In domestic affairs his influence was less decisive. It was not until 1608 that he gained control of the government’s finances through his appointment as lord treasurer. He then set about reducing the crown’s rising debt, but he could neither temper James’s extravagant spending nor convince him to accept his proposal—the Great Contract of 1610—that the House of Commons grant the crown a fixed yearly sum in return for the abolition of certain feudal dues. The deterioration that took place in James’s rule after Cecil’s death was presaged as early as 1611, when the incompetent Robert Carr replaced Cecil in the King’s confidence.
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Cordell Hull
Nobel Peace Prize 1945
Cordell Hull, (born Oct. 2, 1871, Overton county, Tenn., U.S.—died July 23, 1955, Bethesda, Md.), U.S. secretary of state (1933–44) whose initiation of the reciprocal trade program to lower tariffs set in motion the mechanism for expanded world trade in the second half of the 20th century. In 1945 he received the Nobel Prize for Peace for his part in organizing the United Nations.
As a young Tennessee attorney, Hull early identified with the Democratic Party. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 22 years (1907–21, 1923–31) and in the Senate (1931–33). Appointed secretary of state by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt at the beginning of the New Deal, he called for a reversal of high tariff barriers that had increasingly stultified U.S. foreign trade since the 19th century. He first won presidential support and public acclaim for such proposals at the inter-American Montevideo Conference (December 1933). He next succeeded in getting Congress to pass the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (March 1934), which set the pattern for tariff reduction on a most-favoured-nation basis and was a forerunner to the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), begun in 1948.
Cordell Hull
Cordell Hull
Throughout the 1930s Hull did much to improve the United States’ relations with Latin America by implementing what came to be known as the Good Neighbor Policy. At the Montevideo Pan-American Conference (1933) his self-effacing behaviour and acceptance of the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other nations began to counteract the distrust built up through decades of Yankee imperialism in Latin America. He also attended the Pan-American Conference at Buenos Aires (1936) and a special foreign ministers’ conference at Havana (1940). Because of the favourable climate of opinion that he had largely created, Hull successfully sponsored a united front of American republics against Axis aggression during World War II.
In East Asia he rejected a proposed “Japanese Monroe Doctrine” that would have given that country a free hand in China (1934). When Japan served notice later that year that it would not renew the naval-limitation treaties (due to expire in 1936), Hull announced a policy of maintenance of U.S. interests in the Pacific, continuing friendship with China, and military preparedness.
With the outbreak of World War II, Hull and Roosevelt felt that efforts to maintain American neutrality would only encourage aggression by the Axis powers; they therefore decided to aid the Allies. In the crucial negotiations with Japan in the autumn of 1941, Hull stood firm for the rights of China, urging Japan to abandon its military conquests on the mainland.
When the United States entered the war, Hull and his State Department colleagues began planning an international postwar peacekeeping body. At the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers (1943)—despite his frail health and advancing age—he obtained a four-nation pledge to continue wartime cooperation in a postwar world organization aimed at maintaining peace and security. For this work, Roosevelt described Hull as the “father of the United Nations,” and universal recognition of his key role came with the Nobel Prize. He resigned after the 1944 presidential election and wrote his Memoirs of Cordell Hull (1950).
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John Raleigh Mott
Nobel Peace Prize 1946
John R. Mott, in full John Raleigh Mott, (born May 25, 1865, Livingston Manor, N.Y., U.S.—died Jan. 31, 1955, Orlando, Fla.), American Methodist layman and evangelist who shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1946 (with Emily Greene Balch) for his work in international church and missionary movements.
Mott became student secretary of the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), holding this position from 1888 until 1915. He was one of the organizers of the World Missionary Conference (Edinburgh, 1910), which marked the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement and which ultimately resulted in the formation of the World Council of Churches. He was chairman of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (1915–28) and of the International Missionary Council (1921–42) and president of the World’s Alliance of YMCAs (1926–37). Mott wrote extensively, his works including The Future Leadership of the Church (1909) and The Larger Evangelism (1944).
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Emily Greene Balch
Nobel Peace Prize 1946
Emily Greene Balch, (born January 8, 1867, Jamaica Plain [now part of Boston], Mass., U.S.—died January 9, 1961, Cambridge, Mass.), American sociologist, political scientist, economist, and pacifist, a leader of the women’s movement for peace during and after World War I. She received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1946 jointly with John Raleigh Mott. She was also noted for her sympathetic and thorough study of Slavic immigrants in the United States.
Balch was in the first class to graduate from Bryn Mawr College, in 1889. She pursued further studies in Paris and Berlin and at the University of Chicago and received training in social work from followers of Jacob Riis in New York City and at Denison House, a settlement house in Boston, where she was associated with Vida Scudder. In 1896 she began her teaching career at Wellesley College, becoming in 1913 professor of political economy and political and social science.
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Balch continued her interest in the settlement house movement, working with Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago. She was active in promoting various child-welfare reforms and served on Massachusetts commissions on industrial education (1908–09) and immigration (1913–14) and on the Boston city planning board (1914–17). To prepare Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (1910), a study of Slavic immigrants, she lived in Slavic-American neighbourhoods in various cities and traveled to eastern Europe for firsthand knowledge of the Slavic homelands. A member of the Society of Friends, Balch became increasingly committed to the cause of peace and, following her attendance at the International Congress of Women at The Hague in 1915, she devoted her major efforts to that cause. For opposing U.S. entry into World War I, she was dismissed from her professorship at Wellesley in 1918. She helped Addams found the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Zürich, Switzerland, the following year and served as its secretary until 1922, when ill health forced her resignation; she resumed the post briefly in 1934–35 and in 1936 was elected honorary international president.
In 1926 Balch was part of an informal commission organized to study conditions in Haiti, and the committee’s report, Occupied Haiti (1927), of which she was the principal author, was credited with hastening the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country. Balch gave her portion of the 1946 Nobel Prize for Peace to the WILPF. Among her other writings are Outline of Economics (1899), A Study of Conditions of City Life (1903), Approaches to the Great Settlement (1918), Refugees as Assets (1939), One Europe (1947), Vignettes in Prose (1952), and Toward Human Unity, or Beyond Nationalism (1952).
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Lord (John) Boyd Orr
Nobel Peace Prize 1949
John Boyd Orr, Baron Boyd-Orr of Brechin Mearns, also called (1935–49) Sir John Boyd Orr, (born Sept. 23, 1880, Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, Scot.—died June 25, 1971, Edzell, Angus), Scottish scientist and authority on nutrition, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1949.
Boyd-Orr received a scholarship to attend the University of Glasgow, where he enrolled in a teacher-training program and was a student of theology. As part of his scholarship, he was required to teach for a period. After receiving a master’s degree in 1902, he was given a teaching post at a school in the city’s slums, where he witnessed firsthand the ill effects of poverty on children. Within days he resigned from the post and returned home, being reassigned to teach at Kyleshill School in Saltcoats, North Ayrshire.
Upon completing his teaching obligations, Boyd-Orr turned to medicine and the study of nutrition. He returned to the University of Glasgow, earning a bachelor’s degree in science in 1910 and a medical degree in 1914. During his graduate studies, he conducted research into protein metabolism and studied the effects of water intake on nitrogen metabolism and blood pressure. Also in 1914 he became director of the Institute of Animal Nutrition (now Rowett Research Institute) at the University of Aberdeen. However, the institute was not built when Boyd-Orr arrived in Aberdeen. He was given £5,000 to begin building the institute and was required to raise funds for its completion. Following a stint as a medical officer in the British army and navy during World War I, Boyd-Orr returned to Aberdeen and managed to raise enough money to finish the institute’s construction.
In the early 1920s Boyd-Orr investigated metabolism in ruminants and the role of minerals in the health of farm animals. In 1925 he visited Africa, where he learned about the diets of local farm animals and indigenous peoples. He made subsequent trips to the Middle East, India, and elsewhere, exploring various indigenous diets and local farming and animal husbandry practices. He later investigated the nutritional value of cow’s milk for humans, discovering that the addition of milk to the diets of British children led to increases in the children’s weight and height. In 1929, following his research on animal nutrition, he founded the Imperial Bureau of Animal Nutrition at Aberdeen.
Boyd-Orr first gained fame with the publication of Food, Health and Income (1936), a report of a dietary survey by income groups made during 1935 that showed that the cost of a diet fulfilling basic nutritional requirements was beyond the means of half the British population and that 10 percent of the population was undernourished. This and other reports conducted by the Rowett Research Institute formed the basis of the British food-rationing system during World War II.
During the war, Boyd-Orr was a member of the cabinet’s scientific committee on food policy and held the chair of agriculture at the University of Aberdeen. In 1945 he became rector of the University of Glasgow, a member of Parliament for the Scottish universities, and director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), serving in the latter until 1948. While head of the FAO, Boyd-Orr developed a proposal for a World Food Board that would facilitate the transfer of surplus food from food-exporting countries to food-deprived countries upon request by the latter. Once hunger and poverty were eliminated, the food loans would be repaid, without interest. The proposal, considered extraordinarily ambitious, was defeated at a meeting in Copenhagen in 1946. Despite this setback, Boyd-Orr was awarded the Nobel Prize for his efforts to eliminate world hunger.
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Boyd-Orr was knighted in 1935 and received a barony in 1949. His writings include The National Food Supply and Its Influence on Public Health (1934), Food and the People (1943), Food—the Foundation of World Unity (1948), The White Man’s Dilemma (1953), and As I Recall (1966).
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Ralph Bunche
Nobel Peace Prize 1950
Ralph Bunche, in full Ralph Johnson Bunche, (born Aug. 7, 1904, Detroit, Mich., U.S.—died Dec. 9, 1971, New York, N.Y.), U.S. diplomat, a key member of the United Nations for more than two decades, and winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize for Peace for his successful negotiation of an Arab-Israeli truce in Palestine the previous year.
Bunche worked his way through the University of California at Los Angeles and graduated in 1927. He also earned graduate degrees in government and international relations at Harvard University (1928, 1934) and studied in England and South Africa. In 1928 he joined the faculty of Howard University, Washington, D.C., where he set up a department of political science. Meanwhile, he traveled through French West Africa on a Rosenwald field fellowship, studying the administration of French Togoland, a mandated area, and Dahomey, a colony. He later did postdoctoral research at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., and at the London School of Economics before returning to Africa for further studies in colonial policy. Between 1938 and 1940 he collaborated with Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish sociologist, in the monumental study of U.S. race relations, published as An American Dilemma in 1944.
During World War II Bunche served in the U.S. War Department, the Office of Strategic Services, and the State Department. He was active in the preliminary planning for the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference of 1945 and in 1947 joined the permanent UN Secretariat in New York as director of the new Trusteeship Department.
Asked by Secretary General Trygve Lie to aid a UN special committee appointed to negotiate a settlement between warring Palestinian Arabs and Jews, he was thrust unexpectedly into the principal role when the chief mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated in 1948. Bunche finally negotiated armistices between February and May 1949.
Ralph Bunche.
Ralph Bunche.
Elevated in 1955 to the post of undersecretary and two years later to undersecretary for special political affairs, Bunche became chief troubleshooter for Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. One task he undertook was the UN program concerning peaceful uses of atomic energy. In 1956 he supervised the deployment of a 6,000-man UN neutral force in the area of the Suez Canal following the invasion of that area by British, French, and Israeli troops. In 1960 he again found himself in charge of UN peacekeeping machinery—this time in the Congo region. Finally, in 1964 he went to Cyprus to direct the 6,000 neutral troops that intervened between hostile Greek Cypriots and Turks.
Attracting some criticism for seeming to neglect the Civil Rights Movement at home during the 1950s and ’60s, Bunche began to speak out more directly on U.S. racial discrimination. In addition, though not in the best of health, he participated in the 1965 civil rights marches in both Selma and Montgomery, Ala., and also served as a board member for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for 22 years. Ralph J. Bunche: Selected Speeches and Writings was published in 1995.
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Nobel Peace Prize Awardee (1951 ~ 1975)
Léon Jouhaux
Nobel Peace Prize 1951
Léon Jouhaux, (born July 1, 1879, Paris, France—died April 28, 1954, Paris), French Socialist and trade-union leader who was one of the founders of the International Labour Organisation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1951.
A worker in a match factory from the age of 16, Jouhaux soon became one of the leading propagandists of revolutionary syndicalism. He was national secretary of the matchworkers’ union by 1906 and was appointed secretary general of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT; General Confederation of Labour) in 1909. Before World War I he joined with German labour leaders in an attempt to organize an antimilitary movement; but subsequently he supported the French war effort. He attended the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, which set up the International Labour Legislation Commission, of which he was one of the most active members. From this time he also urged the foundation of the Economic Council, which was set up in 1925. He believed that trade unionism should have a role in directing the economy but insisted that trade-union action remain independent of political action. He refused to join Léon Blum’s cabinet in 1936 but in that year agreed to the return of the communists to the CGT, from which they had been split since 1921.
During World War II the Vichy government dissolved the CGT and arrested Jouhaux and turned him over to the Germans; he spent the rest of the war in a concentration camp. Returning to France, he was again secretary general of the reconstituted CGT, but in 1947 he split with the now communist majority and established in 1948 the Force Ouvrière (“Workers’ Force”), which stood between the communists and Roman Catholic labour organizations. In 1949 he helped to found the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and in 1951 he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Albert Schweitzer
Nobel Peace Prize 1952
Albert Schweitzer
The Nobel Peace Prize 1952
Born: 14 January 1875, Kaysersberg, Germany (now France)
Died: 4 September 1965, Lambaréné, Gabon
Residence at the time of the award: France
Role: Missionary surgeon; Founder of Lambaréné (République de Gabon)
Prize motivation: “for his altruism, reverence for life, and tireless humanitarian work which has helped making the idea of brotherhood between men and nations a living one”
Albert Schweitzer received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1953.
Doctor, Missionary, Philosopher and Musician
The expression “reverence for life” is the key to Albert Schweitzer's personal philosophy. No person must ever harm or destroy life unless absolutely necessary. This attitude permeated everything he did.
Schweitzer was born in Alsace in the then German Empire. He studied theology and became a priest, but that was not enough. He wanted to alleviate suffering, and accordingly studied medicine. Together with his wife, who was a nurse, he built and ran a hospital at the mission station Lambarene in Gabon, a French colony at the time. This effort became an example to others.
In 1957, Schweitzer spoke on the radio to people all over the world. The respect of the Nobel Prize Laureate for all life made him issue his warning against nuclear tests and the dangers from radioactive fall-out.
Albert Schweitzer was also a gifted musician and interpreter of Bach. He gave numerous organ concerts in Europe to finance the hospital in Africa.
George Catlett Marshall
Nobel Peace Prize 1953
George Catlett Marshall, (born December 31, 1880, Uniontown, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 16, 1959, Washington, D.C.), general of the army and U.S. Army chief of staff during World War II (1939–45) and later U.S. secretary of state (1947–49) and of defense (1950–51). The European Recovery Program he proposed in 1947 became known as the Marshall Plan. He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1953.(credit@www.britannica.com)
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Lester Bowles Pearson
Nobel Peace Prize 1957
Lester Bowles Pearson
The Nobel Peace Prize 1957
Born: 23 April 1897, Toronto, Canada
Died: 27 December 1972, Ottawa, Canada
Residence at the time of the award: Canada
Role: former Secretary of State for External Affairs of Canada; former President of the 7th Session of the United Nations General Assembly
Prize motivation: “for his crucial contribution to the deployment of a United Nations Emergency Force in the wake of the Suez Crisis”
Father of the United Nations Forces
In 1956, Great Britain, France and Israel launched an attack on Egypt aimed at removing President Nasser. The United States had not been informed, and the Soviet Union threatened to use atomic weapons against the assailants. The “Suez Crisis” found its solution when the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester Pearson, who had served as President of the United Nations General Assembly in 1952, won support for sending a United Nations Emergency Force to the region to separate the warring parties. This gained him the Peace Prize for 1957.
Lester Pearson was a historian. In the inter-war years he was employed in Canada's Department of External Affairs. He was sent to Europe, and witnessed both the breakdown of the League of Nations and the outbreak of World War II. During the war he was stationed in Washington, where he worked on preparations for the founding of the United Nations. Many wanted him to be the first Secretary-General, but the Soviet Union was opposed. Instead, Pearson headed the UN committee that recommended the division of Palestine into a Jewish part and an Arab part.
In 1948, Lester Pearson became Canada's Secretary of State for External Affairs, and he ended his career as Prime Minister in the 1960s.
Georges Pire
Nobel Peace Prize 1958
Dominique Pire, in full Dominique Georges Henri Pire, (born February 10, 1910, Dinant, Belgium—died January 30, 1969, Leuven), Belgian cleric and educator who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1958 for his aid to displaced persons in Europe after World War II.
Pire entered the Dominican monastery of La Sarte at Huy, Belgium, in 1928 and was ordained in 1934. From 1932 to 1936 he studied at the Dominican university in Rome and obtained his doctorate there in 1936. He returned to the monastery of La Sarte to teach moral philosophy (1937–47). He was active in the World War II resistance movement and later became deeply involved in the enormous refugee problem. In 1949 he founded Aid to Displaced Persons, which sought to guarantee moral and material aid to refugees, regardless of their nationality or religion, and soon had branches throughout Europe. Between 1950 and 1954 Pire founded four “homes of welcome” in Belgium for aged refugees. Seven European “villages” were subsequently founded in Germany, Belgium, and Austria (1956–62). Pire also initiated the system of sponsors that allowed a refugee to be helped by a person in another country.
After accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace, Pire established (1960) in Huy the Mahatma Gandhi International Peace Centre, later known as the University of Peace, for instructing youths in the principles and practice of peace. He was also the founder of the World Friendships (to promote better understanding between races) and the World Sponsorships (to aid African and Asian refugees). Pire’s Bâtir la paix (Building Peace) appeared in 1966.(credit@www.britannica.com)
Philip Noel-Baker
Nobel Peace Prize 1959
Philip J. Noel-Baker
The Nobel Peace Prize 1959
Born: 1 November 1889, London, United Kingdom
Died: 8 October 1982, London, United Kingdom
Residence at the time of the award: United Kingdom
Role: Member of Parliament; lifelong ardent worker for international peace and co-operation
Prize motivation: “for his longstanding contribution to the cause of disarmament and peace”
With Disarmament as his Leitmotif
In 1907, Philip Noel-Baker took part in the international peace conference in the Hague. There the great powers refused to enter into agreements concerning disarmament and arbitration. World War I broke out a few years later, and Noel-Baker was convinced that the private armaments industry bore much of the responsibility for the outbreak of war and the bloodbath that followed. The struggle for disarmament became a leitmotif for him for the rest of his life, and led to his being awarded the Peace Prize in 1959.
Noel-Baker read history and law at Cambridge. He participated in World War I as a volunteer medical orderly. After the war he worked at the League of Nations, employment which brought him into close cooperation with such Peace Prize Laureates as Fridtjof Nansen, Normann Angell and Lord Cecil.
During World War II he was a Minister in Winston Churchill's coalition Government, and after the war he became Foreign Minister in Clement Attlee's Labour Government. Noel-Baker helped to draw up the United Nations Charter, and for the rest of his life he engaged in intense efforts to prevent nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Albert John Lutuli
Nobel Peace Prize 1960
Albert John Luthuli[a] (c. 1898 – 21 July 1967) was a South African anti-apartheid activist, traditional leader, and politician who served as the President-General of the African National Congress from 1952 until his death in 1967.
Luthuli was born to a Zulu family in 1898 at a Seventh-day Adventist mission in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In 1908 he moved to Groutville, where his parents and grandparents had lived, to attend school under the care of his uncle. After graduating from high school with a teaching degree, Luthuli became principal of a small school in Natal where he was the sole teacher. He accepted a government bursary to study for the Higher Teacher's Diploma at Adams College. After the completion of his studies in 1922, he accepted a teaching position at Adams College where he was one of the first African teachers. In 1928, he became the secretary of the Natal Native Teachers' Association, then its president in 1933.
Luthuli's entered South African politics and the anti-apartheid movement in 1935, when he was elected chief of the Umvoti River Reserve in Groutville. As chief, he was exposed to the injustices facing many Africans due to the South African government's increasingly segregationist policies. This segregation would later evolve into apartheid, a form of institutionalized racial segregation, following the National Party's election victory in 1948. Luthuli joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944 and was elected the provincial president of the Natal branch in 1951. A year later in 1952, Luthuli led the Defiance Campaign to protest the pass laws and other laws of apartheid. As a result, the government removed him from his chief position as he refused to choose between being a member of the ANC or a chief at Groutville. In the same year, he was elected President-General of the ANC. After the Sharpeville massacre, where sixty-nine Africans were killed, leaders within the ANC such as Nelson Mandela believed the organisation should take up armed resistance against the government. Luthuli was initially against the use of violence. He later gradually came to accept it, but stayed committed to nonviolence on a personal level. Following four banning orders, the imprisonment and exile of his political allies, and the banning of the ANC, Luthuli's power as President-General gradually waned. The subsequent creation of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's paramilitary wing, marked the anti-apartheid movement's shift from nonviolence to an armed struggle.
Inspired by his Christian faith and the nonviolent methods used by Gandhi, Luthuli was praised for his dedication to nonviolent resistance against apartheid as well as his vision of a non-racial South African society. In 1961, Luthuli was awarded the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in leading the nonviolent anti-apartheid movement. Luthuli's supporters brand him as a global icon of peace similar to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, the latter of whom was a follower and admirer of Luthuli. He formed multi-racial alliances with the South African Indian Congress and the white Congress of Democrats, frequently drawing a backlash from Africanists in the ANC. The Africanist bloc believed that Africans should not ally themselves with other races, since Africans were the most disadvantaged race under apartheid. This schism led to the creation of the Pan-Africanist Congress.(credit@www.wikipedia.com)
Dag Hammarskjöld
Nobel Peace Prize 1961
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (/ˈhæmərʃʊld/ HAM-ər-shuuld,[1] Swedish: [ˈdɑːɡ ˈhâmːarˌɧœld] ⓘ; 29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. As of 2023, he remains the youngest person to have held the post, having been only 47 years old when he was appointed. He was a son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917.
Hammarskjöld's tenure was characterized by efforts to strengthen the newly formed UN both internally and externally. He led initiatives to improve morale and organisational efficiency while seeking to make the UN more responsive to global issues. He presided over the creation of the first UN peacekeeping forces in Egypt and the Congo and personally intervened to defuse or resolve diplomatic crises. Hammarskjöld's second term was cut short when he died in a plane crash while en route to cease-fire negotiations during the Congo Crisis.
Hammarskjöld was and remains well regarded internationally as a capable diplomat and administrator, and his efforts to resolve various global crises led to him being the only posthumous recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.[2] He is considered one of the two best UN secretaries-general, along with his successor U Thant,[3] and his appointment has been hailed as one of the most notable successes for the organization. U.S. President John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld "the greatest statesman of our century".
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Linus Carl Pauling
Nobel Peace Prize 1962
Linus Carl Pauling FRS (/ˈpɔːlɪŋ/; February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994)[4] was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics.[5] New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time,[6] and as of 2000, he was rated the 16th most important scientist in history.[7] For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of five people to have won more than one Nobel Prize (the others being Marie Curie, John Bardeen, Frederick Sanger and Karl Barry Sharpless).[8] Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes,[9] and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie.[8]
Pauling was one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology.[10] His contributions to the theory of the chemical bond include the concept of orbital hybridisation and the first accurate scale of electronegativities of the elements. Pauling also worked on the structures of biological molecules, and showed the importance of the alpha helix and beta sheet in protein secondary structure. Pauling's approach combined methods and results from X-ray crystallography, molecular model building, and quantum chemistry. His discoveries inspired the work of Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins on the structure of DNA, which in turn made it possible for geneticists to crack the DNA code of all organisms.[11]
In his later years, he promoted nuclear disarmament, as well as orthomolecular medicine, megavitamin therapy,[12] and dietary supplements, especially ascorbic acid (commonly known as Vitamin C). None of his ideas concerning the medical usefulness of large doses of vitamins have gained much acceptance in the mainstream scientific community.[6][13] He was married to the American human rights activist Ava Helen Pauling.(credit@www.wikipedia.com)
Martin Luther King Jr
Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. A Black church leader and a son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through nonviolence and civil disobedience. Inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi, he led targeted, nonviolent resistance against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination in the United States.
King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights.[1] He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
The SCLC put into practice the tactics of nonviolent protest with some success by strategically choosing the methods and places in which protests were carried out. There were several dramatic standoffs with segregationist authorities, who frequently responded violently.[2] King was jailed several times. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of the FBI's COINTELPRO from 1963 forward. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him. In 1964, the FBI mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.[3]
On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by national mourning, as well as anger leading to riots in many U.S. cities. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the federal holiday was first observed in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and King County in Washington was rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.(credit@www.wikipedia.com)
René Cassin
Nobel Peace Prize 1968
René Cassin, in full René-Samuel Cassin, (born October 5, 1887, Bayonne, France—died February 20, 1976, Paris), French jurist and president of the European Court of Human Rights. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1968 for his involvement in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The son of a Jewish merchant, Cassin studied law before entering the French Army in World War I. During the war he sustained a severe abdominal wound, the effects of which troubled him for the rest of his life. He later became a professor of international law in Paris and then, from 1924 to 1938, served as a French delegate to the League of Nations assemblies and disarmament conferences in Geneva. After the fall of France in June 1940, he joined General Charles de Gaulle in London and served as a key member of the Free French government in exile.
After World War II Cassin became president of the Council of State (Conseil d’État), France’s highest administrative court, and held other high legal and administrative offices in France. Internationally, he helped found the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1944 and was a French delegate to UNESCO from 1945 to 1952. A French representative to the United Nations from 1946 to 1968, he was president of the UN Commission on the Rights of Man (1947–48) and helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although Cassin was originally credited as the author of the document, an examination of the original manuscript seemed to indicate that it had been written by John Peters Humphrey, the director of the Human Rights division of the UN. From 1965 to 1968 Cassin was president of the European Court of Human Rights.
Cassin received the Nobel Prize for Peace on December 20, 1968, the 20th anniversary of the ratification of the UN Declaration. He was also a Zionist and campaigner for Jewish rights and was president of the Alliance Israélite in France.(credit@www.britannica.com)
Norman E. Borlaug
Nobel Peace Prize 1970
Norman Ernest Borlaug (/ˈbɔːrlɔːɡ/; March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009)[2] was an American agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to the extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution. Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.
Borlaug received his B.S. in forestry in 1937 and PhD in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position with CIMMYT in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.[3][1] During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations.[4]
Borlaug was often called "the father of the Green Revolution",[5][6] and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[7][8][9][10] According to Jan Douglas, executive assistant to the president of the World Food Prize Foundation, the source of this number is Gregg Easterbrook's 1997 article "Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity." The article states that the "form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths."[11] He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
Later in his life, he helped apply these methods of increasing food production in Asia and Africa.(credit@www.wikipedia.com)
Willy Brandt
Nobel Peace Prize 1971
Willy Brandt (German: [ˈvɪliː ˈbʁant] ⓘ; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his efforts to strengthen cooperation in western Europe through the EEC and to achieve reconciliation between West Germany and the countries of Eastern Europe.[1] He was the first Social Democratic chancellor since 1930.[2]
Fleeing to Norway and then Sweden during the Nazi regime and working as a left-wing journalist, he took the name Willy Brandt as a pseudonym to avoid detection by Nazi agents, and then formally adopted the name in 1948. Brandt was originally considered one of the leaders of the right wing of the SPD, and earned initial fame as Governing Mayor of West Berlin. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice-chancellor in Kurt Georg Kiesinger's cabinet, and became chancellor in 1969.
As chancellor, he maintained West Germany's close alignment with the United States and focused on strengthening European integration in western Europe, while launching the new policy of Ostpolitik aimed at improving relations with Eastern Europe. Brandt was controversial on both the right wing, for his Ostpolitik, and on the left wing, for his support of American policies, including the Vietnam War, and right-wing authoritarian regimes. The Brandt Report became a recognised measure for describing the general North-South divide in world economics and politics between an affluent North and a poor South. Brandt was also known for his fierce anti-communist policies at the domestic level, culminating in the Radikalenerlass (Anti-Radical Decree) in 1972. In 1970, while visiting a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising crushed by the Germans, Brandt unexpectedly knelt and meditated in silence, a moment remembered as the Kniefall von Warschau.
Brandt resigned as chancellor in 1974, after Günter Guillaume, one of his closest aides, was exposed as an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret service.(credit@www.wikipedia.com)
Henry A. Kissinger
Nobel Peace Prize 1973
Henry Alfred Kissinger (/ˈkɪsɪndʒər/ KISS-in-jər;[2] born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, German: [haɪnts ˈʔalfʁeːt ˈkɪsɪŋɐ], on May 27, 1923) is an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as United States secretary of state and national security advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.[3] For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances.[4]
Kissinger was a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938. Upon arriving in the United States, he excelled academically and graduated from Harvard College in 1950, where he studied under William Yandell Elliott. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University in 1951 and 1954, respectively.
A practitioner of Realpolitik,[5] Kissinger played a prominent role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977, pioneering the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrating an opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, engaging in what became known as shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East to end the Yom Kippur War, and negotiating the Paris Peace Accords, which ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. Kissinger has also been associated with such controversial policies as the U.S. bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, U.S. involvement in the 1973 Chilean military coup, a "green light" to Argentina's military junta for their Dirty War, and U.S. support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War despite a genocide being perpetrated by Pakistan.[6] After leaving government, he formed Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm. Kissinger has written over a dozen books on diplomatic history and international relations.
Kissinger remains a controversial and polarizing figure in U.S. politics, both venerated by some as a highly effective U.S. secretary of state[7] and condemned by others for allegedly tolerating or supporting war crimes committed by allied nation states during his tenure.[5][8][9] A 2015 survey of top international relations scholars, conducted by College of William & Mary, ranked Kissinger as the most effective U.S. secretary of state in the 50 years to 2015.[7] A centenarian, Kissinger is both the earliest serving and the oldest living former U.S. Cabinet member and the last surviving member of Nixon's Cabinet.(credit@www.wikipedia.com)
Le Duc Tho
Nobel Peace Prize 1973
Le Duc Tho, original name Phan Dinh Khai, (born October 14, 1911, Nam Ha province, Vietnam—died October 13, 1990, Hanoi), Vietnamese politician who, acting as an adviser to North Vietnam, negotiated a cease-fire agreement with U.S. official Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War. The two men were jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace, but Tho declined it.
Le Duc Tho was one of the founders of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. For his political activities, he was imprisoned by the French in 1930–36 and 1939–44. After his second release he returned to Hanoi in 1945 and helped lead the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese independence organization, as well as a revived communist party called the Vietnam Workers’ Party. He was the senior Viet Minh official in southern Vietnam until the Geneva Accords of 1954. From 1955 he was a member of the Politburo of the Vietnam Workers’ Party, or the Communist Party of Vietnam, as it was renamed in 1976. During the Vietnam War (1955–75) Tho oversaw the Viet Cong insurgency that began against the South Vietnamese government in the late 1950s. He carried out most of his duties during the war while in hiding in South Vietnam.
U.S. trooops of the 7th. and 9th. divisions wade through marshland during a joint operation on South Vietnam's Mekong Delta, April 1967.
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Tho is best known for his part in the cease-fire of 1973, when he served as special adviser to the North Vietnamese delegation to the Paris Peace Conferences in 1968–73. He eventually became his delegation’s principal spokesman, in which capacity he negotiated with Kissinger, the U.S. national security adviser, the cease-fire agreement that led to the withdrawal of the last American troops from South Vietnam. It was for this accomplishment that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Tho oversaw the North Vietnamese offensive that overthrew the South Vietnamese government in 1975, and he played a similar role in the first stages of Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978. He remained a member of the Politburo until 1986.(credit@www.britannica.com)
Seán MacBride
Nobel Peace Prize 1974
Seán MacBride, (born Jan. 26, 1904, Paris, France—died Jan. 15, 1988, Dublin, Ire.), Irish statesman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1974 for his efforts on behalf of human rights.
MacBride was the son of the Irish actress and patriot Maud Gonne and her husband, Maj. John MacBride, who was executed in 1916 for his part in the Easter Rising of that year against the British. Educated in Paris and Ireland, MacBride always spoke English with a strong French accent. He joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Anglo-Irish war (Irish War of Independence,1919–21). He denied the legitimacy of the Irish Free State established in 1922, and he remained a member of the IRA during and after the civil war of 1922–23 and became its chief of staff in 1936–37, severing his formal ties because he believed the 1937 constitution met republican objectives.
MacBride then became a barrister and specialized in defending his former IRA associates. He founded a new political party, Clann na Poblachta (“Party of the Republic”), in 1946, entered Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament) in 1947, and became minister for external affairs in the first interparty government (1948–51). An ardent Francophile and Anglophobe, he was president of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Council of Europe in 1950, and he was vice president of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation in 1948–51. He caused the collapse of the second interparty government in 1957 because he opposed its response to a new IRA campaign against Northern Ireland. He lost his seat in the ensuing election and never returned to the Dáil.
Thereafter, MacBride was active in a number of international organizations concerned with human rights, among them the International Prisoners of Conscience Fund (trustee) and Amnesty International (chairman, 1961–75), and he served as secretary-general of the International Commission of Jurists (1963–70). In 1973 he became United Nations assistant secretary-general and commissioner for South West Africa/Namibia, posts he held until 1977. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 and the Lenin Peace Prize in 1977; also in that year he was appointed president of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, established by UNESCO.(credit@www.britannica.com)
Eisaku Sato
Nobel Peace Prize 1974
Satō Eisaku, (born March 27, 1901, Tabuse, Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan—died June 3, 1975, Tokyo), prime minister of Japan between 1964 and 1972, who presided over Japan’s post-World War II reemergence as a major world power. For his policies on nuclear weapons, which led to Japan’s signing of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, he was awarded (with cowinner Sean MacBride) the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1974.
After graduating with a degree in law from Tokyo Imperial University (now University of Tokyo) in 1924, Satō joined the Ministry of Railways, becoming the chief of its bureau of control in 1941 and vice-minister for transportation in 1948. That same year he joined the Liberal Party and was elected in 1949 to the lower house of the Diet (parliament). Becoming minister of construction in 1952, he resigned his post the following year to become chief secretary of the Liberal Party. When the Liberal Party was merged with the Democratic Party, Satō became one of the leading members of the new coalition called the Liberal-Democratic Party. During the late 1950s he served as minister of finance in the cabinet of his older brother and political mentor, Kishi Nobusuke. Kishi was succeeded in 1960 by Ikeda Hayato, in whose cabinet Satō also served.
After Ikeda resigned because of ill health, the Diet in November 1964 chose Satō as his successor. As prime minister Satō presided over the continued growth of the Japanese economy and the improvement of Japanese relations with other Asian countries. Although Satō increased Japanese trade with mainland China to some extent, China distrusted his policies toward Taiwan and his support of the United States cause in the Vietnam War. In 1969 Satō reached an agreement with U.S. President Richard M. Nixon for future return of the Ryukyu Islands to Japan, the removal of all nuclear weapons from the area, and the continued maintenance of the U.S.-Japanese Mutual Security Treaty. Satō came under heavy criticism for provisions in the agreement that allowed U.S. military forces to remain on Okinawa Island after its return to Japan.
In the early 1970s problems with the United States over Japan’s huge surplus in Japanese-U.S. trade put increased pressure on Satō. He attempted to seek new Japanese markets in Europe and the Soviet Union, but his unpopularity continued, especially after President Nixon visited China in February 1972, preempting similar Japanese efforts. Satō resigned in June 1972, shortly after the Ryukyus were officially returned to Japan. He was unable to ensure the election of his chosen successor, and his passing from the scene seemed to mark the end of the old guard that had dominated Japanese politics since 1945.(credit@www.britannica.com)
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov
Nobel Peace Prize 1975
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (Russian: Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров, IPA: [ɐnˈdrʲej ˈdmʲitrʲɪjevʲɪtɕ ˈsaxərəf]; 21 May 1921 – 14 December 1989) was a Soviet physicist and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world.
Although he spent his career in physics in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, overseeing the development of thermonuclear weapons, Sakharov also did fundamental work in understanding particle physics, magnetism, and physical cosmology. Sakaharov is mostly known for his political activism for individual freedom, human rights, civil liberties and reforms in Russia, for which, he was deemed as a dissident and faced persecution from the Soviet establishment.[1]
In his memory, the Sakharov Prize is established by the European Parliament which is awarded annually for the people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms.(credit@www.britannica.com)
Nobel Peace Prize Awardee (1976 ~ 2000)
Betty Williams
Nobel Peace Prize 1976
Betty Williams, byname of Elizabeth Williams, (born May 22, 1943, Belfast, Northern Ireland—died March 17, 2020, Belfast), Northern Irish peace activist who, with Máiread Maguire and Ciaran McKeown, founded the Peace People, a grassroots movement dedicated to ending the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland. For her work, Williams shared with Maguire the 1976 Nobel Prize for Peace.
Williams, an office worker and wife and mother, took little part in public life until August 1976, when she witnessed an incident that moved her to speak out. An Irish Republican Army terrorist was shot by British troops while fleeing in a car, and the car went out of control and struck several people, killing three children. Williams immediately began circulating petitions in Protestant neighbourhoods calling for an end to sectarian violence. This activity soon brought her into association with Maguire (then Máiread Corrigan), an aunt of the slain children, who had been similarly galvanized into action. Together they founded the Peace People to advocate for an end to the Northern Ireland conflict.
Williams left the Peace People organization in the early 1980s. Soon afterward she immigrated to the United States, where she resided for two decades before moving to the Republic of Ireland. Williams founded the World Centers of Compassion for Children International in 1997. In 2006 she joined Maguire and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winners Shirin Ebadi, Jody Williams, Wangari Maathai, and Rigoberta Menchú to found the Nobel Women’s Initiative.(credit@www.britannica.com)
Mairead Corrigan
Nobel Peace Prize 1976
Máiread Maguire, née Máiread Corrigan, also called (from 1981) Máiread Corrigan Maguire, (born January 27, 1944, Belfast, Northern Ireland), Northern Irish peace activist who, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, founded the Peace People, a grassroots movement of both Roman Catholic and Protestant citizens dedicated to ending the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland. For their work, Maguire and Williams shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for Peace.
Although Maguire from a young age earned her living as a secretary, she also was from her youth a member of the Legion of Mary, a lay Catholic welfare organization, and through it she became deeply involved in voluntary social work among children and teenagers in various Catholic neighbourhoods of Belfast. She was stirred to act against the growing violence in Northern Ireland after witnessing in August 1976 an incident in which a car being driven by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorist went out of control when the IRA man was shot by British troops. The car struck and killed three children of Maguire’s sister. Williams was also a witness. Within days each woman had publicly denounced the violence and called for mass opposition to it. Marches of Catholic and Protestant women, numbering in the thousands, were organized, and shortly afterward the Peace People was founded based on the conviction that genuine reconciliation and prevention of future violence were possible, primarily through the integration of schools, residential areas, and athletic clubs. The organization published a biweekly paper, Peace by Peace, and provided for families of prisoners a bus service to and from Belfast’s jails.
Although Williams broke away from the Peace People in 1980, Maguire remained an active member and later served as the group’s honorary president. In 2006 Maguire joined Williams and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winners Shirin Ebadi, Jody Williams, Wangari Maathai, and Rigoberta Menchú to found the Nobel Women’s Initiative. Maguire was also active in various Palestinian causes—notably, efforts to end the Israeli government’s blockade of the Gaza Strip—and she was deported from Israel on several occasions. In addition, she spoke out against the U.S.-led wars in Iraq (2003–11) and Afghanistan (2001–14). The book The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in Northern Ireland (1999) is a collection of Maguire’s writings.(credit@www.britannica.com)
Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat
Nobel Peace Prize 1978
Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat[a] (25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the third president of Egypt, from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981. Sadat was a senior member of the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and a close confidant of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, under whom he served as Vice President twice and whom he succeeded as president in 1970. In 1978, Sadat and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, signed a peace treaty in cooperation with United States President Jimmy Carter, for which they were recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his eleven years as president, he changed Egypt's trajectory, departing from many of the political and economic tenets of Nasserism, re-instituting a multi-party system, and launching the Infitah economic policy. As President, he led Egypt in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to regain Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967, making him a hero in Egypt and, for a time, the wider Arab World. Afterwards, he engaged in negotiations with Israel, culminating in the Egypt–Israel peace treaty; this won him and Menachem Begin the Nobel Peace Prize, making Sadat the first Muslim Nobel laureate. Although reaction to the treaty—which resulted in the return of Sinai to Egypt—was generally favorable among Egyptians,[5] it was rejected by the country's Muslim Brotherhood and the left, which felt Sadat had abandoned efforts to ensure a Palestinian state.[5] With the exception of Sudan, the Arab world and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) strongly opposed Sadat's efforts to make a separate peace with Israel without prior consultations with the Arab states.[5] His refusal to reconcile with them over the Palestinian issue resulted in Egypt being suspended from the Arab League from 1979 to 1989.[6][7][8][9] The peace treaty was also one of the primary factors that led to his assassination; on 6 October 1981, militants led by Khalid Islambouli opened fire on Sadat with automatic rifles during the 6 October parade in Cairo, killing him.
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Menachem Begin
Nobel Peace Prize 1978
Menachem Begin, in full Menachem Wolfovitch Begin, (born August 16, 1913, Brest-Litovsk, Russia [now in Belarus]—died March 9, 1992, Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel), Zionist leader who was prime minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983. Begin was the corecipient, with Egyptian Pres. Anwar el-Sādāt, of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace for their achievement of a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt that was formally signed in 1979.
(Read Britannica’s 1980 interview with Anwar Sadat.)
Begin received a law degree from the University of Warsaw in 1935. Active in the Zionist movement throughout the 1930s, he became (1938) the leader of the Polish branch of the Betar youth movement, dedicated to the establishment of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River. When the Germans invaded Warsaw in 1939, he escaped to Vilnius; his parents and a brother died in concentration camps. The Soviet authorities deported Begin to Siberia in 1940, but in 1941 he was released and joined the Polish army in exile, with which he went to Palestine in 1942.
Begin joined the militant Irgun Zvai Leumi and was its commander from 1943 to 1948. After Israel’s independence in 1948 the Irgun formed the Ḥerut (“Freedom”) Party with Begin as its head and leader of the opposition in the Knesset (Parliament) until 1967. Begin joined the National Unity government (1967–70) as a minister without portfolio and in 1973 became joint chairman of the Likud (“Unity”) coalition.
Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin
Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin
On May 17, 1977, the Likud Party won a national electoral victory and on June 21 Begin formed a government. He was perhaps best known for his uncompromising stand on the question of retaining the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which had been occupied by Israel during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Prodded by U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter, however, Begin negotiated with Pres. Anwar el-Sādāt of Egypt for peace in the Middle East, and the agreements they reached, known as the Camp David Accords (September 17, 1978), led directly to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt that was signed on March 26, 1979. Under the terms of the treaty, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula, which it had occupied since the 1967 war, to Egypt in exchange for full diplomatic recognition. Begin and Sādāt were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1978.
Begin formed another coalition government after the general election of 1981. Despite his willingness to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt under the terms of the peace agreement, he remained resolutely opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In June 1982 his government mounted an invasion of Lebanon in an effort to oust the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its bases there. The PLO was driven from Lebanon, but the deaths of numerous Palestinian civilians there turned world opinion against Israel. Israel’s continuing involvement in Lebanon, and the death of Begin’s wife in November 1982, were probably among the factors that prompted him to resign from office in October 1983.
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Mother Teresa
Nobel Peace Prize 1979
Mother Teresa, in full St. Teresa of Calcutta, also called St. Mother Teresa, original name Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, (baptized August 27, 1910, Skopje, Macedonia, Ottoman Empire [now in Republic of North Macedonia]—died September 5, 1997, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India; canonized September 4, 2016; feast day September 5), founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India. She was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace.
The daughter of an ethnic Albanian grocer, she went to Ireland in 1928 to join the Sisters of Loreto at the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and sailed only six weeks later to India as a teacher. She taught for 17 years at the order’s school in Calcutta (Kolkata).
Stained glass of Joan of Arc in St. Mary of the Angels, Wellington, New Zealand. Roman Catholic church. (Saint Joan of Arc, St. Joan of Arc)
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In 1946 Sister Teresa experienced her “call within a call,” which she considered divine inspiration to devote herself to caring for the sick and poor. She then moved into the slums she had observed while teaching. Municipal authorities, upon her petition, gave her a pilgrim hostel, near the sacred temple of Kali, where she founded her order in 1948. Sympathetic companions soon flocked to her aid. Dispensaries and outdoor schools were organized. Mother Teresa adopted Indian citizenship, and her Indian nuns all donned the sari as their habit. In 1950 her order received canonical sanction from Pope Pius XII, and in 1965 it became a pontifical congregation (subject only to the pope). In 1952 she established Nirmal Hriday (“Place for the Pure of Heart”), a hospice where the terminally ill could die with dignity. Her order also opened numerous centres serving the blind, the aged, and the disabled. Under Mother Teresa’s guidance, the Missionaries of Charity built a leper colony, called Shanti Nagar (“Town of Peace”), near Asansol, India.
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa
In 1962 the Indian government awarded Mother Teresa the Padma Shri, one of its highest civilian honours, for her services to the people of India. Pope Paul VI on his trip to India in 1964 gave her his ceremonial limousine, which she immediately raffled to help finance her leper colony. She was summoned to Rome in 1968 to found a home there, staffed primarily with Indian nuns. In recognition of her apostolate, she was honoured on January 6, 1971, by Pope Paul, who awarded her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work, and the following year the Indian government conferred on her the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honour.
In her later years Mother Teresa spoke out against divorce, contraception, and abortion. She also suffered ill health and had a heart attack in 1989. In 1990 she resigned as head of the order but was returned to office by a nearly unanimous vote—the lone dissenting voice was her own. A worsening heart condition forced her retirement, and the order chose the Indian-born Sister Nirmala as her successor in 1997. At the time of Mother Teresa’s death, her order included hundreds of centres in more than 90 countries with some 4,000 nuns and hundreds of thousands of lay workers. Within two years of her death, the process to declare her a saint was begun, and Pope John Paul II issued a special dispensation to expedite the process of canonization. She was beatified on October 19, 2003, reaching the ranks of the blessed in what was then the shortest time in the history of the church. She was canonized by Pope Francis I on September 4, 2016.
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa
Although Mother Teresa displayed cheerfulness and a deep commitment to God in her daily work, her letters (which were collected and published in 2007) indicate that she did not feel God’s presence in her soul during the last 50 years of her life. The letters reveal the suffering she endured and her feeling that Jesus had abandoned her at the start of her mission. Continuing to experience a spiritual darkness, she came to believe that she was sharing in Christ’s Passion, particularly the moment in which Christ asks, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Despite this hardship, Mother Teresa integrated the feeling of absence into her daily religious life and remained committed to her faith and her work for Christ.
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Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
Nobel Peace Prize 1980
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, (born November 26, 1931, Buenos Aires, Argentina), Argentine sculptor and architect, who became a champion of human rights and nonviolent reform in Latin America. His work as secretary-general of Peace and Justice (Paz y Justicia), an ecumenical organization established in 1974 to coordinate human rights activities throughout Latin America, brought him the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1980.
Pérez Esquivel, son of a fisherman, was already well-known as a sculptor when he was appointed to a professorship at the Argentine National School of Fine Arts in 1968. He resigned his chair upon being chosen to lead Peace and Justice in 1974. His outspoken advocacy placed him in a precarious situation: in denouncing the terrorism of both the left and the right that had brought Argentina to the brink of civil war, he brought upon himself the enmity of both sides. He spoke on behalf of the desaparecidos, the thousands of people who had simply “disappeared” during the Argentine military junta’s campaign against extremists. He was himself arrested in 1977 and held without charge for 14 months, during which time he was tortured.
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Alva Myrdal
Nobel Peace Prize 1982
Alva Reimer Myrdal, (born Jan. 31, 1902, Uppsala, Sweden—died Feb. 1, 1986, Ersta, near Stockholm), Swedish diplomat, government minister, author, and advocate of nuclear disarmament. She was the corecipient with Alfonso García Robles of Mexico of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1982.
Alva Reimer married the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal in 1924. After a career as a teacher, she served as principal director of the United Nations Department of Social Welfare during 1949–50 and became director of the UNESCO Department of Social Sciences in 1951. From 1955 to 1961 she served as ambassador of the Swedish government to India, with related duties in neighbouring Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). In 1961 Myrdal was named special disarmament adviser to the Swedish foreign minister. A year later she was elected to Parliament as a Social Democrat and was named head of the Swedish delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. In 1966 she became minister with portfolio covering disarmament and church affairs, holding that post and the one in Geneva until 1973. Subsequently, she wrote and spoke frequently on behalf of disarmament; her publications include The Game of Disarmament: How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race (1976). In addition to the Nobel Prize, Myrdal received the West German Peace Prize (1970; jointly with her husband), the Albert Einstein Peace Prize (1980), and the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding (1981).
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Alfonso García Robles
Nobel Peace Prize 1982
Alfonso García Robles, (born March 20, 1911, Zamora, Michoacán, Mex.—died Sept. 2, 1991, Mexico City), Mexican diplomat and advocate of nuclear disarmament, corecipient with Alva Myrdal of Sweden of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1982.
After receiving his law degree in Mexico and completing graduate study at the University of Paris and at the International Law Academy in The Hague, García Robles entered Mexico’s foreign service in 1939 and was a delegate to the 1945 San Francisco Conference, at which the United Nations (UN) was founded. He subsequently worked in the UN Secretariat for several years. As director general in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the late 1950s, García Robles played a central role at the Law of the Sea conferences, which defined the continental shelf for conservation purposes.
While serving as ambassador to Brazil, he first encountered the proposition of excluding nuclear armaments from Latin America, and, after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, he persuaded the Mexican government to support such a policy. His unremitting efforts eventually led to the Treaty of Tlatelolco (1967), which committed 22 nations of Latin America to bar nuclear weapons from their territories. A year later he helped draft the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. He was appointed permanent representative to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1977. In 1978 he served as chairman of the Mexican delegation to the UN General Assembly’s special session on disarmament. The author of more than a dozen books, García Robles is remembered as one of Mexico’s most distinguished internationalists of the 20th century.
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Lech Walesa
Nobel Peace Prize 1983
Lech Wałęsa (/ˈlɛx vəˈwɛnsə, vɑːˈlɛnsə/;[1][2] Polish pronunciation: [ˈlɛɣ vaˈwɛ̃sa] ⓘ;[3] born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the President of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected President of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote. A shipyard electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement, and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.
While working at the Lenin Shipyard (now Gdańsk Shipyard), Wałęsa, an electrician, became a trade-union activist, for which he was persecuted by the government, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980, he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government. He co-founded the Solidarity trade-union, whose membership rose to over ten million.
After martial law in Poland was imposed and Solidarity was outlawed, Wałęsa was again arrested. Released from custody, he continued his activism and was prominent in the establishment of the Round Table Agreement that led to the semi-free 1989 Polish legislative election and a Solidarity-led government. He presided over Poland's transition from Marxist–Leninist state socialism into a free-market capitalist liberal democracy, but his active role in Polish politics diminished after he narrowly lost the 1995 Polish presidential election. In 1995, he established the Lech Wałęsa Institute.
Since 1980, Wałęsa has received hundreds of prizes, honors and awards from multiple countries and organizations worldwide. He was named the Time Person of the Year (1981) and one of Time's 100 most important people of the 20th century (1999). He has received over forty honorary degrees, including from Harvard University and Columbia University, as well as dozens of the highest state orders, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and the French Grand Cross of Legion of Honour. In 1989, Wałęsa was the first foreign non-head of state to address the Joint Meeting of the U.S. Congress. The Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport has borne his name since 2004.
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Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Nobel Peace Prize 1984
Desmond Mpilo Tutu[1] OMSG CH GCStJ (7 October 1931 – 26 December 2021) was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from black theology with African theology.
Tutu was born of mixed Xhosa and Motswana heritage to a poor family in Klerksdorp, South Africa. Entering adulthood, he trained as a teacher and married Nomalizo Leah Tutu, with whom he had several children. In 1960, he was ordained as an Anglican priest and in 1962 moved to the United Kingdom to study theology at King's College London. In 1966 he returned to southern Africa, teaching at the Federal Theological Seminary and then the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. In 1972, he became the Theological Education Fund's director for Africa, a position based in London but necessitating regular tours of the African continent. Back in southern Africa in 1975, he served first as dean of St Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg and then as Bishop of Lesotho; from 1978 to 1985 he was general-secretary of the South African Council of Churches. He emerged as one of the most prominent opponents of South Africa's apartheid system of racial segregation and white minority rule. Although warning the National Party government that anger at apartheid would lead to racial violence, as an activist he stressed non-violent protest and foreign economic pressure to bring about universal suffrage.
In 1985, Tutu became Bishop of Johannesburg and in 1986 the Archbishop of Cape Town, the most senior position in southern Africa's Anglican hierarchy. In this position, he emphasised a consensus-building model of leadership and oversaw the introduction of female priests. Also in 1986, he became president of the All Africa Conference of Churches, resulting in further tours of the continent. After President F. W. de Klerk released the anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and the pair led negotiations to end apartheid and introduce multi-racial democracy, Tutu assisted as a mediator between rival black factions. After the 1994 general election resulted in a coalition government headed by Mandela, the latter selected Tutu to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses committed by both pro and anti-apartheid groups. Following apartheid's fall, Tutu campaigned for gay rights and spoke out on a wide range of subjects, among them his criticism of South African presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, his opposition to the Iraq War, and describing Israel's treatment of Palestinians as apartheid. In 2010, he retired from public life, but continued to speak out on numerous topics and events.
As Tutu rose to prominence in the 1970s, different socio-economic groups and political classes held a wide range of views about him, from critical to admiring. He was popular among South Africa's black majority and was internationally praised for his work involving anti-apartheid activism, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize and other international awards. He also compiled several books of his speeches and sermons.
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Elie Wiesel
Nobel Peace Prize 1986
Elie Wiesel (/ˈɛli viːˈzɛl/, born Eliezer Wiesel, Yiddish: אליעזר װיזעל Eliezer Vizel;[4][5] September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.[6]
He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In his political activities, he also campaigned for victims of oppression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua, Kosovo, and Sudan. He publicly condemned the 1915 Armenian genocide and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He was described as "the most important Jew in America" by the Los Angeles Times in 2003.[7]
Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind", stating that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel delivered a message "of peace, atonement, and human dignity" to humanity. The Nobel Committee also stressed that Wiesel's commitment originated in the sufferings of the Jewish people but that he expanded it to embrace all repressed peoples and races.[8] He was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active in it throughout his life.
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Oscar Arias Sánchez
Nobel Peace Prize 1987
Óscar Arias Sánchez, (born September 13, 1941, Heredia, Costa Rica), Costa Rican politician who served as president of Costa Rica (1986–90, 2006–10) and was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his Central American peace plan.
Born into one of the wealthiest coffee-growing families in Costa Rica, Arias studied economics at the University of Costa Rica and earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Essex in England. In the 1960s he began working for the social-democratic National Liberation Party (Partido Liberación Nacional; PLN), and in 1972 he was appointed minister of planning in the government of Pres. José Figueres Ferrer, a post he held until 1977. He was elected secretary-general of the PLN in 1979, and in 1986 he won the general election to become president of Costa Rica.
As president, Arias took measures to cope with Costa Rica’s heavy foreign indebtedness and other economic problems, but his main interest was in trying to restore peace and political stability to the strife-torn countries of Central America. He took office in the midst of the Contra war, in which rebel forces (the “Contras”), supported by the United States but based primarily in Honduras, attempted to bring down the Sandinista government of neighbouring Nicaragua. Though harshly critical of the Sandinistas, he forbade that regime’s guerrilla opponents from operating militarily on Costa Rican soil, despite pressure from the United States. In February 1987 he proposed a regional peace plan for the Central American countries that would set a date for cease-fires between government and rebel forces, ensure amnesty for political prisoners, and schedule free and democratic elections in those countries. Arias and the leaders of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua signed this plan in August 1987; although signed, the plan was never fully implemented, partly because of opposition from the United States.
In October 1987 Arias was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his efforts to achieve the beginnings of peace in the region. In 1988 Arias used his Nobel Prize money to establish the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, which promoted peace and equality throughout the world. Arias also was active in various global nongovernmental organizations that focused their efforts on promoting peace and rooting out corruption.
Though several of his successors were linked to corruption (two were jailed briefly in 2004), Arias was untainted by scandal during his tenure as president, and he was recruited to run for the presidency of Costa Rica again in 2006. Pledging to invest in education and housing and to sign the Central America–Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA–DR) with the United States (Costa Rica had been the only Central American country not to join the pact), Arias won a narrow victory. In 2007 Costa Rican citizens voted in favour of CAFTA–DR by a slim margin in the country’s first national referendum.
In July 2009 Arias began mediating the political crisis in Honduras, which had begun that June with the ouster of Honduran Pres. Manuel Zelaya by that country’s military. Arias’s proposed solutions, however, were rebuffed by Zelaya and the interim leader of Honduras. Arias, who supported the demilitarization of Central America, contended that the coup was just one result of the region’s “reckless military spending.” Ineligible to run for a consecutive term, Arias was succeeded as president in May 2010 by Laura Chinchilla, a fellow member of the PLN. (See also Sidebar: Lessons of the 20th Century.)
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Tenzin Gyatso
Nobel Peace Prize 1989
14th Dalai Lama, also called Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, or Tenzin Gyatso, original name Lhamo Thondup, Thondup also spelled Dhondup, (born July 6, 1935, Tibet), title of the Tibetan Buddhist monk who was the 14th Dalai Lama but the first to become a global figure, largely for his advocacy of Buddhism and of the rights of the people of Tibet. Despite his fame, he dispensed with much of the pomp surrounding his office, describing himself as a “simple Buddhist monk.”
(Read the Dalai Lama’s Britannica essay on compassion.)
It is a tenet of Tibetan Buddhism (which traditionally has flourished not only in Tibet but in Mongolia, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and other parts of India and China) that highly advanced religious teachers return to the world after their death, motivated by their compassion for the world. (See Dalai Lama: A Call to Compassion.) At the time of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, there were several thousand of these teachers, often referred to in English as “incarnate lamas” (the term in Tibetan is sprul sku, which literally means “emanation body”). The most important and famous of these teachers was the Dalai Lama, whose line began in the 14th century. The third incarnation, named Bsod-nams-rgya-mtsho (1543–88), was given the title of Dalai Lama (“Ocean Teacher”) by the Mongol chieftain Altan in 1580. His two previous incarnations were posthumously designated as the first and second Dalai Lamas. Until the 17th century the Dalai Lamas were prominent religious teachers of the Dge-lugs-pa sect (commonly called Yellow Hats), one of the four major sects of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1642 the fifth Dalai Lama was given temporal control of Tibet, and the Dalai Lamas remained head of state until the flight of the 14th Dalai Lama into exile in 1959. It is said that the previous incarnations of the 14th Dalai Lama extend not only to the previous 13 but further back into Tibetan history to include the first Buddhist kings (chos rgyal) of the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries. All the Dalai Lamas and these early kings are considered human embodiments of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion and the protector of Tibet.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
Nobel Peace Prize 1990
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev[f] (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 and additionally as head of state beginning in 1988, as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990 and the only President of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991. Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s.
Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, Russian SFSR, to a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage. Growing up under the rule of Joseph Stalin, in his youth, he operated combine harvesters on a collective farm before joining the Communist Party, which then governed the Soviet Union as a one-party state. Studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Titarenko in 1953 and received his law degree in 1955. Moving to Stavropol, he worked for the Komsomol youth organization and, after Stalin's death, became a keen proponent of the de-Stalinization reforms of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee in 1970, overseeing the construction of the Great Stavropol Canal. In 1978, he returned to Moscow to become a Secretary of the party's Central Committee, and in 1979 joined its governing Politburo (25th term). Three years after the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev—following the brief tenures of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko—in 1985, the Politburo elected Gorbachev as general secretary, the de facto leader.
Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and its Marxist–Leninist ideals, Gorbachev believed significant reform was necessary for survival. He withdrew troops from the Soviet–Afghan War and embarked on summits with United States president Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear weapons and end the Cold War. Domestically, his policy of glasnost ("openness") allowed for enhanced freedom of speech and press, while his perestroika ("restructuring") sought to decentralize economic decision-making to improve its efficiency. His democratization measures and formation of the elected Congress of People's Deputies undermined the one-party state. Gorbachev declined to intervene militarily when various Eastern Bloc countries abandoned Marxist–Leninist governance in 1989–1992. Internally, growing nationalist sentiment threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading Marxist–Leninist hardliners to launch the unsuccessful August Coup against Gorbachev in 1991. In the coup's wake, the Soviet Union dissolved against Gorbachev's wishes. After resigning from the presidency, he launched the Gorbachev Foundation, became a vocal critic of Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and campaigned for Russia's social-democratic movement.
Gorbachev is considered one of the most significant figures of the second half of the 20th century. The recipient of a wide range of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, he is praised for his role in ending the Cold War, introducing new political and economic freedoms in the Soviet Union, and tolerating both the fall of Marxist–Leninist administrations in eastern and central Europe and the German reunification. In Russia, he is often derided for facilitating the dissolution of the Soviet Union—an event which weakened Russia's global influence and precipitated an economic collapse in Russia and other states.
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Aung San Suu Kyi
Nobel Peace Prize 1991
Aung San Suu Kyi born 19 June 1945), sometimes abbreviated to Suu Kyi, is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has served as the general secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) since the party's founding in 1988, and was registered as its chairperson while it was a legal party from 2011 to 2023.[4][5][6] She played a vital role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s.
The youngest daughter of Aung San, Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar, and Khin Kyi, Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, British Burma. After graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964 and St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1968, she worked at the United Nations for three years. She married Michael Aris in 1972, with whom she had two children.
Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the 8888 Uprising of 8 August 1988 and became the General Secretary of the NLD, which she had newly formed with the help of several retired army officials who criticized the military junta. In the 1990 elections, NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament, but the results were nullified, as the military government (the State Peace and Development Council – SPDC) refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. She had been detained before the elections and remained under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners.[7] In 1999, Time magazine named her one of the "Children of Gandhi" and his spiritual heir to nonviolence.[8] She survived an assassination attempt in the 2003 Depayin massacre when at least 70 people associated with the NLD were killed.[9]
Her party boycotted the 2010 elections, resulting in a decisive victory for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Aung San Suu Kyi became a Pyithu Hluttaw MP while her party won 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the 2012 by-elections. In the 2015 elections, her party won a landslide victory, taking 86% of the seats in the Assembly of the Union—well more than the 67% supermajority needed to ensure that its preferred candidates were elected president and second vice president in the presidential electoral college. Although she was prohibited from becoming the president due to a clause in the constitution—her late husband and children are foreign citizens—she assumed the newly created role of State Counsellor of Myanmar, a role akin to a prime minister or a head of government.
When she ascended to the office of state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi drew criticism from several countries, organisations and figures over Myanmar's inaction in response to the genocide of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and refusal to acknowledge that Myanmar's military has committed massacres.[10][11][12][13][14] Under her leadership, Myanmar also drew criticism for prosecutions of journalists.[15] In 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice where she defended the Burmese military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya.[16]
Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party had won the November 2020 Myanmar general election, was arrested on 1 February 2021 following a coup d'état that returned the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Armed Forces) to power and sparked protests across the country. Several charges were filed against her, and on 6 December 2021, she was sentenced to four years in prison on two of them. Later, on 10 January 2022, she was sentenced to an additional four years on another set of charges.[17] On 12 October 2022, she was convicted of two further charges of corruption and she was sentenced to two terms of three years' imprisonment to be served concurrent to each other.[18] On 30 December 2022, her trials ended with another conviction and an additional sentence of seven years' imprisonment for corruption. Aung San Suu Kyi's final sentence was of 33 years in prison,[19] later reduced to 27 years.[20] The United Nations, most European countries, and the United States condemned the arrests, trials, and sentences as politically motivated.
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Rigoberta Menchú Tum
Nobel Peace Prize 1992
Rigoberta Menchú, (born January 9, 1959, Chimel, Guatemala), Guatemalan Indian-rights activist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992.
Menchú, of the Quiché Maya group, spent her childhood helping with her family’s agricultural work; she also likely worked on coffee plantations. As a young woman, she became an activist in the local women’s rights movement and joined with the Catholic church to advocate for social reform. The activism of Menchú and her family led to persecution by Guatemala’s military government. When a guerrilla organization became active in their region, her father, a leader of a peasant organization opposed to the government, was accused of guerrilla activities. During Guatemala’s ensuing civil war, he died in a fire while protesting human rights abuses by the military. Menchú’s younger brother was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by a military death squad in 1979, and her mother was kidnapped, raped, mutilated, and murdered by soldiers the following year. Menchú fled to Mexico in 1981 and was cared for there by members of a liberal Roman Catholic group. She soon joined international efforts to make the Guatemalan government cease its brutal counterinsurgency campaigns against Indian peasants, becoming a skilled public speaker and organizer in the course of her efforts.
Menchú gained international prominence in 1983 with her widely translated book I, Rigoberta Menchú, in which she tells the story of her impoverished youth and recounts in horrifying detail the torture-murders of her brother and mother. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her continuing efforts to achieve social justice and mutual reconciliation in Guatemala; she used the prize money to found the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation, an Indian advocacy organization. In the late 1990s her autobiography became the centre of controversy after its veracity was questioned, most notably by David Stoll in Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (1999). Despite alleged inaccuracies in her story, Menchú continued to earn praise for bringing international attention to the situation in Guatemala. In 2004 she accepted President Óscar Berger’s offer to help implement the country’s peace accords.
Menchú created the Indian-led political movement Winaq (Mayan: “The Wholeness of the Human Being”) in February 2007. That September, as the candidate of a coalition between Winaq and the left-wing Encounter for Guatemala party, she ran for president of Guatemala but earned less than 3 percent of the vote. Her 2011 presidential bid was also unsuccessful.
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Nelson Mandela
Nobel Peace Prize 1993
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (/mænˈdɛlə/;[1] Xhosa: [xolíɬaɬa mandɛ̂ːla]; born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.
A Xhosa, Mandela was born into the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, South Africa. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party's white-only government established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged whites, Mandela and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow. He was appointed president of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, following the Rivonia Trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state.
Mandela served 27 years in prison, split between Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure and fears of racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk led efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid, which resulted in the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president. Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country's racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Economically, his administration retained its predecessor's liberal framework despite his own socialist beliefs, also introducing measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty and expand healthcare services. Internationally, Mandela acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and served as secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999. He declined a second presidential term and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman and focused on combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist and those on the far left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid's supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism. Globally regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours, including the Nobel Peace Prize. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Thembu clan name, Madiba, and described as the "Father of the Nation".
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Frederik Willem de Klerk
Nobel Peace Prize 1993
F.W. de Klerk, in full Frederik Willem de Klerk, (born March 18, 1936, Johannesburg, South Africa—died November 11, 2021, Cape Town), politician who as president of South Africa (1989–94) brought the apartheid system of racial segregation to an end and negotiated a transition to majority rule in his country. He and Nelson Mandela jointly received the 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace for their collaboration in efforts to establish nonracial democracy in South Africa.
De Klerk was the son of a leading politician. He received a law degree (with honours) from Potchefstroom University in 1958. Soon afterward he began to establish a successful law firm in Vereeniging, becoming active in civic and business affairs there. In 1972 he was elected to Parliament for the National Party. His legal talents and the respect in which he was held won him a number of key ministerial portfolios, including mines and energy affairs (1979–82), internal affairs (1982–85), and national education and planning (1984–89). He was elected leader of the House of Assembly in 1986.
After Pres. P.W. Botha fell ill in January 1989, de Klerk was elected leader of the National Party and successfully opposed Botha’s resumption of office after his recovery. De Klerk was formally elected president by South Africa’s tricameral Parliament on September 14. He owed his political success to the power base he had built up in the Transvaal, where he had been chairman of the provincial National Party from 1982.
As president, de Klerk committed himself to speeding up the reform process begun by his predecessor and to initiating talks about a new postapartheid constitution with representatives of what were then the country’s four designated racial groups (white, Black, Coloured, and Asian [Indian]). Though faced with a strengthened right-wing opposition in Parliament (the Conservative Party), following his famous opening address to Parliament on February 2, 1990, de Klerk quickly moved to release all important political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, and to lift the ban on the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania. Thereafter, he frequently met with Black leaders, and in 1991 his government passed legislation that repealed racially discriminatory laws affecting residence, education, public amenities, and health care in South Africa. In 1992 he called a referendum in which almost 69 percent of the country’s white voters endorsed his reform policies. That same year de Klerk undertook serious negotiations with Mandela and other Black leaders over a proposed new constitution that would enfranchise the Black majority and lead to all-race national elections. In the meantime, his government continued to systematically dismantle the legislative basis for the apartheid system.
Under de Klerk’s leadership, the governing National Party reached agreement with the ANC in the summer of 1993 on a transition to majority rule. De Klerk led his party’s campaign in South Africa’s first all-race elections in April 1994, in which the ANC obtained a majority of seats in the new National Assembly. De Klerk subsequently joined a government of national unity formed by Mandela, taking the post of second deputy president. He resigned as deputy president in 1996 and as head of the National Party in 1997, when he announced his retirement from politics. He established the F.W. de Klerk Foundation in 2000 and the Global Leadership Foundation in 2004.
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Yasser Arafat
Nobel Peace Prize 1994
Yāsir ʿArafāt, orig. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raʾūf al-Qudwah al-Ḥusaynī, (born August 1929—died Nov. 11, 2004, Paris, France), Palestinian leader. The date and place of his birth are disputed. A birth certificate registered in Cairo, Egypt, gives Aug. 24, 1929, but some sources support his claim to have been born in Jerusalem on Aug. 4, 1929. He graduated from the University of Cairo as a civil engineer and served in the Egyptian army during the 1956 Suez Crisis. That year, working as an engineer in Kuwait, he cofounded the guerrilla organization Fatah, which became the leading military component of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which he led from 1969. In 1974 the PLO was formally recognized by the UN, and ʿArafāt became the first leader of a nongovernmental organization to address the UN. In 1988 he acknowledged Israel’s right to exist, and in 1993 he formally recognized Israel during direct talks regarding land controlled by Israel since the Six-Day War. In 1994 he shared the Nobel Prize for Peace with Israelis Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. In 1996 he became president of the new Palestinian Authority.
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Shimon Peres
Nobel Peace Prize 1994
Shimon Peres, original name Shimon Perski, (born August 16?, 1923, Wiszniew, Poland [now Vishnyeva, Belarus]; see Researcher’s Note—died September 28, 2016, Ramat Gan, Israel), Polish-born Israeli statesman, who served as both prime minister (1984–86 and 1995–96) and president (2007–14) of Israel and as leader of the Israel Labour Party (1977–92, 1995–97, and 2003–05). In 1993, in his role as Israeli foreign minister, Peres helped negotiate a peace accord with Yāsir ʿArafāt, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), for which they, along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994.
David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres
David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres
Peres immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1934. In 1947 he joined the Haganah movement, a Zionist military organization, under the direction of David Ben-Gurion, who soon became his political mentor. When Israel achieved independence in May 1948, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion appointed Peres, then only 24 years old, head of Israel’s navy. In 1952 he was appointed deputy director general of the Ministry of Defense, and he later served as director general (1953–59) and deputy defense minister (1959–65), during which service he stepped up state weapons production, initiated a nuclear research program, and established overseas military alliances, most notably with France. Peres resigned in 1965 to join Ben-Gurion in founding a new party, Rafi, in opposition to the succeeding prime minister, Levi Eshkol.
The Rafi Party was unsuccessful, and in 1967 Peres initiated merger negotiations between the Mapai (Ben-Gurion’s former party) and the Ahdut Avodah, a more leftist workers’ party, which led to the establishment of the Israel Labour Party, of which he became deputy secretary-general. He became defense minister in the Labour cabinet of Rabin in 1974.
In 1977 Peres became head of the Labour Party and, as such, was twice defeated (1977, 1981) by Menachem Begin of the Likud party as a candidate for prime minister before winning access to the post after the indecisive elections of 1984. In September 1984 Peres and Yitzhak Shamir, head of Likud, formed a power-sharing agreement, with Peres as prime minister for the first half of a 50-month term and Shamir as deputy prime minister and foreign minister; the roles were reversed for the second 25-month period. Under Peres’s moderate and conciliatory leadership, Israel withdrew its forces in 1985 from their controversial incursion into Lebanon. After similarly indecisive elections in 1988, the Labour and Likud parties formed another coalition government, with Peres as finance minister and Shamir as prime minister; this coalition lasted only until 1990, when Likud was able to form a government without Labour support.
Yasser Arafat; Shimon Peres; Yitzhak Rabin; Nobel Prize
Yasser Arafat; Shimon Peres; Yitzhak Rabin; Nobel Prize
In February 1992, in the first primary election ever held by a major Israeli party, Peres lost the Labour leadership to Rabin. When Labour won in the general elections in June and Rabin became prime minister of Israel in July, Peres was brought into the cabinet as foreign minister. After the Israel-PLO accord was signed in 1993, Peres handled the negotiations with the PLO over the details of the pact’s implementation. Following the assassination of Rabin in 1995, Peres took over as prime minister. In May 1996 he was narrowly defeated in his bid for reelection by Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud. Peres declined to seek reelection as leader of the Labour Party in 1997 but stayed active in politics, serving as foreign minister (2001–02), deputy prime minister (2001–02), and vice prime minister (2005) in the national unity government led by Likud’s Ariel Sharon. In 2003 Peres resumed the chair of the Labour Party but was unexpectedly defeated in the party’s leadership election in November 2005. A few weeks later he left the Labour Party to join the centrist party Kadima. From 2007 to 2014 Peres served as president of Israel, a largely ceremonial post.
In 2012 Peres was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. His books include the memoir Battling for Peace (1995) and Ben-Gurion: A Political Life (2011).
Yitzhak Rabin
Nobel Peace Prize 1994
Yitzhak Rabin (/rəˈbiːn/;[1] Hebrew: יִצְחָק רַבִּין, IPA: [jitsˈχak ʁaˈbin] ⓘ; 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77, and from 1992 until his assassination in 1995.
Rabin was born in Jerusalem to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and was raised in a Labor Zionist household. He learned agriculture in school and excelled as a student. He led a 27-year career as a soldier and ultimately attained the rank of Rav Aluf. As a teenager he joined the Palmach, the commando force of the Yishuv. He eventually rose through its ranks to become its chief of operations during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He joined the newly formed Israel Defense Forces in late 1948 and continued to rise as a promising officer. He helped shape the training doctrine of the IDF in the early 1950s, and led the IDF's Operations Directorate from 1959 to 1963. He was appointed Chief of the General Staff in 1964 and oversaw Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Rabin served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973, during a period of deepening U.S.–Israel ties. He was appointed Prime Minister of Israel in 1974 after the resignation of Golda Meir. In his first term, Rabin signed the Sinai Interim Agreement and ordered the Entebbe raid. He resigned in 1977 in the wake of a financial scandal. Rabin was Israel's minister of defense for much of the 1980s, including during the outbreak of the First Intifada.
In 1992, Rabin was re-elected as prime minister on a platform embracing the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. He signed several historic agreements with the Palestinian leadership as part of the Oslo Accords. In 1994, Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with long-time political rival Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Rabin also signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. In November 1995, he was assassinated by an extremist named Yigal Amir, who opposed the terms of the Oslo Accords. Amir was convicted of Rabin's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Rabin was the first native-born prime minister of Israel, the only prime minister to be assassinated, and the second to die in office after Levi Eshkol. Rabin has become a symbol of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.
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Joseph Rotblat
Nobel Peace Prize 1995
Joseph Rotblat, in full Sir Joseph Rotblat, (born November 4, 1908, Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire [now in Poland]—died August 31, 2005, London, England), Polish-born British physicist who became a leading critic of nuclear weaponry. He was a founding member (1957), secretary-general (1957–73), and president (1988–97) of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a London-based worldwide organization of scholars that seeks solutions to problems of national development and international security. In 1995 Rotblat and his organization were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for their long-standing promotion of nuclear disarmament, most notably by sponsoring discussions between scientists from the United States and the Soviet Union.
Rotblat was educated in Warsaw at the Free University of Poland (M.A., 1932) and at the University of Warsaw (Ph.D., 1938). In 1939 he won a fellowship to the University of Liverpool, England, with which he was associated until 1949. In 1944 he moved to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, which developed the first atomic bombs, but he quit the project and returned to Britain that same year after learning that Nazi Germany would not build a competing atomic bomb. After the war Rotblat shifted the focus of his research to medical physics. In 1950 he became a professor of physics at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College at the University of London.
Michael Faraday (L) English physicist and chemist (electromagnetism) and John Frederic Daniell (R) British chemist and meteorologist who invented the Daniell cell.
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In 1955 Rotblat was among a handful of prominent scientists, including Albert Einstein, who signed a manifesto written by Bertrand Russell that criticized the proliferation of nuclear arms. The manifesto led to the founding of the Pugwash Conferences, named for the native village in Nova Scotia, Canada, of the industrialist and philanthropist Cyrus Eaton, where they were inaugurated in 1957. The conferences have gathered scientists from many countries and are held regularly at various sites throughout the world. Rotblat published several works on the Pugwash movement, nuclear physics, and world peace. He was knighted in 1998.
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Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo
Nobel Peace Prize 1996
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, (born February 3, 1948, Wailacama, East Timor), Roman Catholic bishop of Dili who, with José Ramos-Horta, received the 1996 Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts to bring peace to East Timor (Timor Timur) during the period that it was under Indonesian control (1975–99).
Belo was ordained a bishop in 1983. As spiritual leader of a territory that is overwhelmingly Catholic, he became one of the primary spokesmen of the Timorese people. In 1989 he was named apostolic administrator of Dili. He denounced the brutal tactics and oppressive policies of the Indonesian government despite at least two attempts on his life, in 1989 and 1991. Following a massacre of peaceful demonstrators in Dili in 1991, Belo successfully campaigned for reforms in the military and the dismissal of two generals. A strong believer in nonviolent resistance, Belo sought peaceful means to settle the troubles in his homeland. In an open letter written in July 1994, he outlined his concern for the people of East Timor and proposed that the Indonesian government reduce its military presence, expand the civil rights of citizens, and allow East Timor to conduct a democratic referendum on self-determination. The referendum, held in 1999, paved the way for East Timor’s independence in 2002.
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Citing poor health, Belo resigned as apostolic administrator of Dili in November 2002. He later rejected calls to run for president of East Timor. In 2004 he began serving as a missionary in Mozambique.
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José Ramos-Horta
Nobel Peace Prize 1996
José Ramos-Horta, (born December 26, 1949, Dili, East Timor), East Timorese political activist who, along with Bishop Carlos F.X. Belo, received the 1996 Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts to bring peace and independence to East Timor, a former Portuguese possession that was under Indonesian control from 1975 to 1999. Ramos-Horta served as prime minister of East Timor from 2006 to 2007 and as president from 2007 to 2012.
Ramos-Horta’s mother was a native Timorese, and his father was a Portuguese national who was deported to East Timor for participating in a revolt against the dictator António Salazar. After studying law in the United States, Ramos-Horta returned to East Timor (then under Portuguese rule) to participate in the independence movement. His activities brought the ire of the Portuguese rulers, and he was forced to flee to Mozambique in 1970. Returning in 1972, Ramos-Horta sided with the pro-independence Fretilin faction in the East Timor civil war. The Fretilin gained control of the government on November 28, 1975, and declared East Timor’s independence; Ramos-Horta was named foreign minister. However, nine days later Indonesia invaded East Timor, and Ramos-Horta was again forced into exile.
Eventually settling in Sydney, Australia, Ramos-Horta joined the faculty of the University of New South Wales. From that position he became one of the primary voices for East Timor in the international arena, becoming East Timor’s de facto ambassador to the United Nations (UN). He spoke out against human rights violations by the occupying Indonesian military forces and promoted a peace plan to end the violence in his country. After receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1996, he gave the award and prize money to a program called Microcredit for the Poor. He returned home in 1999 after the UN Security Council established the UN Transition Administration in East Timor.
Ramos-Horta continued to urge forgiveness and reconciliation and was appointed East Timor’s foreign minister in 2000; he continued in that office after East Timor achieved full sovereignty in 2002. In 2006 fighting erupted in the country after Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri fired hundreds of soldiers who had gone on strike to protest against discrimination. Criticized for his handling of the crisis, Alkatiri resigned and was replaced by Ramos-Horta, who took office in July 2006. In May 2007 Ramos-Horta was elected president, garnering nearly 70 percent of the vote. The following year he was seriously injured after being shot by rebels outside his home in Dili, East Timor. He recovered, and he served out the rest of his term. Ramos-Horta failed in his bid for a second term, however, when, in March 2012, he came in third in the first round of presidential voting. He was succeeded in May by former guerrilla leader and later East Timor military commander Taur Matan Ruak (José Maria Vasconcelos).
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Jody Williams
Nobel Peace Prize 1997
Jody Williams, (born October 9, 1950, Putney, Vermont, U.S.), American activist who helped found the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). In 1997 she and the campaign were named corecipients of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
(Read Nobelist Jody Williams’ Britannica essay on landmines.)
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In 1984 Williams received a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. She was a co-coordinator of the Nicaragua-Honduras Education Project (1984–86) and deputy director of Medical Aid for El Salvador (1986–92). In October 1992, with the cooperation of six international organizations, she coordinated the launch of the ICBL with the mission of abolishing the use of antipersonnel land mines. Her efforts bore fruit in December 1997, when the Mine Ban Treaty was signed by more than 100 countries in Ottawa. During the following decade, about 130 countries ratified the treaty—with the exception of the major mine-producing ones, such as the United States, Russia, and China.
Williams lectured widely on the dangers of land mines, publicizing the presence of tens of millions of unexploded land mines in more than 70 countries. She was coauthor of After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines (1995), which examines the socioeconomic impact of land-mine contamination in four countries, and coeditor of Banning Landmines: Disarmament, Citizen Diplomacy, and Human Security (2008). In 2007 she was appointed to lead a United Nations High-Level Mission to investigate human rights abuses in the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur. In the same year, she joined the faculty of the University of Houston’s Graduate College of Social Work as a professor of peace and social justice. She received more than a dozen honorary degrees and was named by Forbes magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world. Her memoir, My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize, was published in 2013.
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John Hume
Nobel Peace Prize 1998
John Hume, (born January 18, 1937, Londonderry, Northern Ireland—died August 3, 2020, Londonderry), leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in Northern Ireland from 1979 to 2001. He served in the British Parliament from 1983 to 2005 and the European Parliament from 1979 to 2004; he was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998 to 2000. In 1998 he and David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Originally a schoolteacher, Hume, a Roman Catholic, became a moderate leader in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement in the 1960s and won a seat in the Northern Ireland parliament in 1969. A founding member of the SDLP, he was elected its leader in 1979. From the outset Hume was recognized as the chief strategist for the SDLP. He played a crucial role in negotiations leading to the short-lived power-sharing assembly and executive body of 1973–74, which had been designed to give proportional representation to the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. He was elected to the British Parliament in 1983.
Believing that internal solutions to the conflict in Northern Ireland had failed, Hume turned his attention to the United States, cultivating relationships with Irish-American political leaders such as Senators Edward Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan; speaker of the House Thomas Philip (“Tip”) O’Neill; and Governor Hugh Carey of New York. Together they condemned the use of violence and urged Irish Americans not to support the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Gradually expanding its membership to include both Republican and Democratic leaders, the “Friends of Ireland,” as the group called itself from 1981, encouraged United States President Ronald Reagan to persuade British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to pursue closer relations with Ireland. The improved relations made possible the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which gave the Irish Republic an official consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland.
Elected to the European Parliament in 1979, Hume developed his connections with political leaders on the continent. As a strong advocate of European integration, he urged the European Union (EU) to become involved in efforts to end the conflict in Northern Ireland. Hume made his influence felt in a number of EU reports and initiatives reflecting his commitment to a peaceful settlement.
In the late 1980s Hume attempted to persuade Irish supporters of the IRA to abandon the armed struggle against Britain and enter democratic politics. In three separate initiatives from 1988 to 1993, Hume, facing criticism from Nationalists opposed to the IRA, risked his personal safety to engage in sometimes secret dialogues with Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, which resulted in the Hume-Adams statement of 1993. This document encouraged the British and Irish governments to adopt a “three-stranded” approach to peace negotiations, one that would address issues within Northern Ireland; between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; and between the Republic of Ireland and Britain. Subsequent discussions based on this approach were the first multiparty peace talks to involve Sinn Féin, which joined them in 1997. Hume is generally credited with the vision that lay behind the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), the multiparty peace accord reached in April 1998.
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David Trimble
Nobel Peace Prize 1998
William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, PC (15 October 1944 – 25 July 2022) was a Northern Irish politician who was the inaugural First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002, and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 1995 to 2005.[2] He was also Member of Parliament (MP) for Upper Bann from 1990 to 2005 and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Upper Bann from 1998 to 2007.
Trimble began his career teaching law at The Queen's University of Belfast in the 1970s, during which time he began to get involved with the paramilitary-linked Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party (VPUP). He was elected to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975, and joined the UUP in 1978 after the VPUP disbanded.[2] Remaining at Queen's University, he continued his academic career until being elected as the MP for Upper Bann in 1990. In 1995 he was unexpectedly elected as the leader of the UUP.[2] He was instrumental in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and (along with John Hume) won the Nobel Peace Prize that year for his efforts. He was later elected to become the first First Minister of Northern Ireland, although his tenure was turbulent and frequently interrupted by disagreements over the timetable for Provisional Irish Republican Army decommissioning.
Trimble resigned the leadership of the UUP soon after being defeated at the 2005 general election. In June 2006, he accepted a life peerage in the House of Lords, taking the title of Baron Trimble, of Lisnagarvey in the County of Antrim.[3] He did not stand again for the Assembly, which finally reconvened in 2007, instead leaving the UUP to join the Conservative Party.
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Kim Dae-jung
Nobel Peace Prize 2000
President Kim Dae-jung was born on December 3, 1925 in a small village on an island of South Korea’s southwestern coast. He graduated from a commercial high school in 1943.
When the Syngman Rhee Administration (1948-1960) began to become increasingly dictatorial, he decided to enter politics. His political career proved to be rather turbulent from the start. He was elected to the National Assembly in a bi-election in 1961 after two unsuccessful bids, but, within three days of his election, the National Assembly was dissolved following a military coup d’etat led by Major General Park Chung Hee.
When he was elected again to the National Assembly in 1963, he began to emerge as a junior leader within his own party. He served as the spokesman for the Democratic Party in 1965 and became the chairman of the party’s Policy Planning Committee the following year.
As President Park Chung Hee sought constitutional revisions in 1969 to allow himself to run for a third term, Kim Dae-jung gave an address against the scheme in an outdoor rally, and he was widely acclaimed for his vision and courage. He was chosen the presidential candidate of the New Democratic Party in 1971, running against the all-powerful incumbent, Park Chung Hee. Despite the obstructionist tactics and illegal electioneering practices of the ruling party, he garnered over 46 per cent of the votes cast.
During the Assembly election campaign that soon followed the presidential vote, opposition leader Kim experienced what was to be the first of at least five attempts on his life by his political foes. A heavy-load truck rammed into his car, seriously injuring him and his two aides. President Kim still suffers from the leg injury.
Barely a year after the election, President Park imposed martial law, banned all political activities and rammed the so-called Yushin (revitalizing reform) Constitution through the National Assembly. It gave the president power for life. Kim Dae-jung strenuously objected to these extra-legal measures and led campaigns against Park’s regime in the U.S. and Japan. In August 1973, agents of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency abducted Kim from a Tokyo hotel. The plot was to “eliminate” him but swift and strong reactions from the U.S. and Japan resulted in his release in Seoul a week later. He was immediately placed under house arrest.
On March 1, 1976, the indomitable opposition leader joined other democracy fighters in issuing the “Independence Day Declaration for Democratization,” which touched off yet another wave of pro-democracy demonstrations in Korea. Subsequently, he was sentenced to five years in prison. He remained in jail until the authorities released him and put him under house arrest in 1978.
Soon after President Park was assassinated by one of his close aides in October 1979, Kim had his civil and political rights restored. After a few months of political unrest another group of soldiers seized power and Kim Dae-jung was thrown into prison, again, in May 1980 on charges of treason. In November of that year, a military court sentenced him to death. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, and then to a 20-year term. In December 1982, his prison term was suspended, and he was allowed to travel to the United States.
Kim ended his exile in the U.S. and returned home in early 1985 despite his supporters’ warnings that he might meet the same tragic fate as Philippine Senator Benigno Aquino. Back in Seoul, he was immediately put under house arrest but his return intensified the nationwide pro-democracy movement. In June 1987, Kim was cleared of all outstanding charges and his civil and political rights were fully restored. He ran and was defeated in presidential elections in 1987 and 1992.
In December 1997, he was elected to the presidency, winning 40.3 per cent of the votes. When he was inaugurated as the eighth President of the Republic of Korea, it marked the first transition of power from the ruling to the opposition party in Korea’s modern history.
Taking over the government in the midst of an unprecedented financial crisis, President Kim devoted himself to the task of economic recovery and managed to pull the country back from the brink of bankruptcy. Reforms and restructuring that began early in his Administration still continue.
President Kim Dae-jung’s vision for the Korean people led him to pursue a policy of engagement toward North Korea. He and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il worked together on a joint declaration they signed on June 15, 2000 paving the way for a brighter future for all Koreans and other peace-loving peoples of the world.
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 2000, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 2001
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/ Nobel Lectures/The Nobel Prizes. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.
Kim Dae-jung died on 18 August, 2009.
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Nobel Peace Prize Awardee (2001 ~ 2025)
Kofi Annan
Nobel Peace Prize 2001
Kofi A. Annan of Ghana, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, is the first to be elected from the ranks of UN staff. His first five-year term began on 1 January 1997 and, following his subsequent re-appointment by the UN Member States, he will begin a second five-year term on 1 January 2002.
As Secretary-General, Mr. Annan has given priority to revitalizing the UN through a comprehensive programme of reform; strengthening the Organization’s traditional work in the areas of development and the maintenance of international peace and security; advocating human rights, the rule of law and the universal values of equality, tolerance and human dignity; restoring public confidence in the Organization by reaching out to new partners and, in his words, by “bringing the United Nations closer to the people”. The Secretary-General has also taken a leading role in mobilizing the international community in the battle against HIV/AIDS, and more recently against the global terrorist threat.
Born in Kumasi, Ghana, on 8 April 1938, Mr. Annan studied at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi and completed his undergraduate work in economics at Macalester College in the United States in 1961. From 1961 to 1962, he undertook graduate studies in economics at the Institut universitaire des hautes études internationales in Geneva. As a 1971- 1972 Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Annan received a Master of Science degree in management.
Mr. Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organization in Geneva, where he later also served with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. At UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Annan held senior positions in a diverse range of areas, including human resources management (1987-1990), budget and finance (1990-1992), and peacekeeping (March 1992-December 1996). He was Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping at a time when nearly 70,000 military and civilian personnel were deployed in UN operations around the world.
Before becoming Secretary-General, Mr. Annan received a number of special assignments. In 1990, he facilitated the repatriation of international staff and citizens of Western countries from Iraq after it invaded Kuwait. He subsequently led initial negotiations with Baghdad on the sale of oil to fund humanitarian relief. From November 1995 to March 1996, Mr. Annan served as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative to the former Yugoslavia. As Secretary-General, Mr. Annan has used his good offices in several delicate political situations, including an attempt in 1998 to gain Iraq’s compliance with Security Council resolutions, as well as a mission that year to promote the transition to civilian rule in Nigeria. In 1999, he helped to resolve the stalemate between Libya and the Security Council, and to forge an international response to violence in East Timor. In 2000, he certified Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon. Since the renewed outbreak of violence in the Middle East in September 2000, he has worked to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to resolve their differences through negotiations based on Security Council resolutions and the principle of “land for peace”.
The Secretary-General has strengthened partnerships with civil society, the private sector and others outside of government whose strengths complement those of the UN. He has called for a “Global Compact” to encourage businesses to respect standards relating to the environment, employment laws and human rights. In April, 2000, he issued a report on the UN’s role in the 21st century, outlining actions needed to end poverty and inequality, improve education, cut HIV/AIDS, safeguard the environment and protect peoples from violence. The report formed the basis of the Millennium Declarations adopted by national leaders attending the UN Millennium Summit that September.
Calling the HIV/AIDS epidemic his “personal priority”, the Secretary- General issued a “Call to Action” in April, 2001, proposing the establishment of a Global AIDS and Health Fund, which has since received some $ 1.5 billion in pledges and contributions.
Since the terrorist attacks hit the United States on 11 September 2001, the Secretary-General has played a leading role in galvanizing global action through the General Assembly and the Security Council to combat terrorism. The Secretary-General has received honorary degrees from universities in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, as well as a number of other prizes and awards for his contributions to the aims and purposes of the United Nations.
The Secretary-General is fluent in English, French and several African languages. He is married to Nane Annan, of Sweden, a lawyer and painter who has a great interest in understanding the work of the United Nations in the field. Two issues of particular concern to her are HIV/AIDS and education for women. She has also written a book for children about the United Nations. The Annans have three children.
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Jimmy Carter
Nobel Peace Prize 2002
ames Earl Carter
The Nobel Peace Prize 2002
Born: 1 October 1924, Plains, GA, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Role: 39th President of the United States of America
Prize motivation: “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”
While the President of the United States, George W. Bush, was planning war on Iraq in the autumn of 2002, former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Peace Prize for undertaking peace negotiations, campaigning for human rights, and working for social welfare. According to the Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Carter ought to have been awarded the Prize as early as in 1978, when he successfully mediated a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.
Jimmy Carter was born in Georgia. In 1953, after a military career, he took over his parents' farm near the town of Plains. He went into politics as a Democrat, and was elected Governor of Georgia. In 1976 Carter won the presidential election, partly thanks to his reputation as an honest born-again Christian.
The high-point of his presidential term was the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Thereafter, he experienced several setbacks in his foreign policy, such as the conflict with Iran after the fall of the Shah and a new cold war with the Soviet Union after that country's invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. In the following year Carter lost the presidential election to Ronald Reagan. As ex-President, Carter conducted an active peace and mediation campaign which sometimes seemed to run counter to official US policy.
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Shirin Ebadi
Nobel Peace Prize 2003
Shirin Ebadi
The Nobel Peace Prize 2003
Born: 21 June 1947, Hamadan, Iran
Residence at the time of the award: Iran
Prize motivation: “for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children”
The First Female Peace Prize Laureate from the Islamic World
The lawyer Shirin Ebadi was one of Iran's first female judges. After Khomeini's revolution in 1979 she was dismissed. Ebadi opened a legal practice and began defending people who were being persecuted by the authorities. In the year 2000 she was imprisoned herself for having criticized her country's hierocracy.
Shirin Ebadi took up the struggle for fundamental human rights and especially the rights of women and children. She took part in the establishment of organizations that placed these issues on the agenda, and wrote books proposing amendments to Iran's succession and divorce laws. She also wanted to withdraw political power from the clergy and advocated the separation of religion and state.
In its choice of Ebadi, the Nobel Committee expressed a wish to reduce the tensions between the Islamic and the Western worlds following the terrorist attack on the United States on 11 September 2001. At the same time, the Committee wished to extend a helping hand to the Iranian reform movement.
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Wangari Muta Maathai
Nobel Peace Prize 2004
Wangari Muta Maathai
The Nobel Peace Prize 2004
Born: 1 April 1940, Nyeri, Kenya
Died: 25 September 2011, Nairobi, Kenya
Residence at the time of the award: Kenya
Prize motivation: “for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”
Sustainable Development, Democracy and Peace
Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She was also the first female scholar from East and Central Africa to take a doctorate (in biology), and the first female professor ever in her home country of Kenya. Maathai played an active part in the struggle for democracy in Kenya, and belonged to the opposition to Daniel arap Moi's regime.
In 1977 she started a grass-roots movement aimed at countering the deforestation that was threatening the means of subsistence of the agricultural population. The campaign encouraged women to plant trees in their local environments and to think ecologically. The so-called Green Belt Movement spread to other African countries, and contributed to the planting of over thirty million trees.
Maathai's mobilisation of African women was not limited in its vision to work for sustainable development; she saw tree-planting in a broader perspective which included democracy, women's rights, and international solidarity. In the words of the Nobel Committee: “She thinks globally and acts locally.”
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Mohamed ElBaradei
Nobel Peace Prize 2005
Mohamed ElBaradei
The Nobel Peace Prize 2005
Born: 17 June 1942, Cairo, Egypt
Residence at the time of the award: Egypt
Role: Director General of IAEA
Prize motivation: “for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way”
Proliferation of Nuclear Arms Must Be Stopped
Mohamed ElBaradei took up the post of Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in December 1997, and had managed the Agency's affairs outstandingly for two four-year periods when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005. Just before the award was announced, ElBaradei was re-elected for a third period.
In the reasons it gave for the award, the Nobel Committee pointed to the important work ElBaradei and the IAEA had done to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that civil use of nuclear power takes place under reliable international control. The Committee also noted how much ElBaradei had done to strengthen the IAEA as an organization and to increase accession to the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Mohamed ElBaradei was born in Cairo in 1942. He read law in Egypt, and took a doctorate in international law at the New York University School of Law in 1974. Before becoming head of the IAEA he had worked for a number of years as an Egyptian diplomat and in the United Nations.
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Muhammad Yunus
Nobel Peace Prize 2006
Muhammad Yunus
The Nobel Peace Prize 2006
Born: 28 June 1940, Chittagong, British India (now Bangladesh)
Residence at the time of the award: Bangladesh
Role: Founder of Grameen Bank
Prize motivation: “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below”
Banker to the Poorest of the Poor
Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 for their work to “create economic and social development from below”. Grameen Bank's objective since its establishment in 1983 has been to grant poor people small loans on easy terms - so-called micro-credit - and Yunus was the bank's founder.
In 1972, following studies in Bangladesh and the USA, Yunus was appointed professor of economics at the University of Chittagong. When Bangladesh suffered a famine in 1974, he felt that he had to do something more for the poor beyond simply teaching. He decided to give long-term loans to people who wanted to start their own small enterprises. This initiative was extended on a larger scale through Grameen Bank.
According to Yunus, poverty means being deprived of all human value. He regards micro-credit both as a human right and as an effective means of emerging from poverty: “Lend the poor money in amounts which suit them, teach them a few basic financial principles, and they generally manage on their own”, Yunus claims.
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Albert Arnold
Nobel Peace Prize 2007
Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2007
Born: 31 March 1948, Washington, D.C., USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Prize motivation: “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”
An Inconvenient Truth
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 was awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former US Vice President Al Gore for their efforts to obtain and disseminate information about the climate challenge. In Gore's case, certainly, the award was grounded in his tireless campaign to put the climate crisis on the political agenda.
As early as in 1992, the year when he was elected Vice President of the United States, Gore was making himself known as a highly environment-conscious politician, among other things through his book Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose, in which he took up the problem of global warming. Having lost the presidential election in 2000, he decided to use his influence to increase public awareness in the United States and other countries of the seriousness of the environmental situation. This goal he well-nigh achieved by means of his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth (2006).
According to the Nobel Committee, Gore is probably the single individual who has done most to rouse the public and the governments that action had to be taken to meet the climate challenge. “He is,” in the words of the Committee, “the great communicator”.
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Martti Ahtisaari
Nobel Peace Prize 2008
Martti Ahtisaari
The Nobel Peace Prize 2008
Born: 23 June 1937, Viipuri (now Vyborg), Finland
Residence at the time of the award: Finland
Prize motivation: “for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”
Settler of Conflicts and Peace Mediator
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2008 was awarded to Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland, for his great efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts. Ahtisaari was a major contributor when Namibia achieved independence in 1989-90, arbitrated in Kosovo in 1999 and 2005-07, and helped to bring the long-lasting conflict in the Aceh province in Indonesia to an end in 2005.
Ahtisaari was born in Viborg in 1937. In the Winter War in 1939-40, the town was annexed by the Soviet Union and its inhabitants were driven out. Those childhood experiences motivated him in his adult commitment to peace.
In 1977, following many years in the foreign service, Ahtisaari was appointed UN Commissioner for Namibia. The assignment aroused his interest in the resolution of conficts and peace mediation. He was President of Finland from 1994 to 2000. After his presidential term, he again stepped up his work for peace, among other things by establishing Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), which played an active part in bringing about the Aceh peace accord in 2005.
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Barack H. Obama
Nobel Peace Prize 2009
Barack Hussein Obama
The Nobel Peace Prize 2009
Born: 4 August 1961, Honolulu, HI, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Role: 44th President of the United States of America
Prize motivation: “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”
Inspires Hope for a Better Future
Barack H. Obama, the 44th President of the United States, had been in power for less than eight months when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. Among the reasons it gave, the Nobel Committee lauded Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. Emphasis was also given to his support - in word and deed - for the vision of a world free from nuclear weapons.
Even before the election, Obama had advocated dialogue and cooperation across national, ethnic, religious and political dividing lines. As President, he called for a new start to relations between the Muslim world and the West based on common interests and mutual understanding and respect. In accordance with a promise he made during his election campaign, he set in motion a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. occupying forces from Iraq.
During his first year in power, President Obama showed himself to be a strong spokesman for human rights and democracy, and as a constructive supporter of the work being done to put effective measures in place to combat the climate crisis. This is in line with his appeal: “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges”.
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Liu Xiaobo
Nobel Peace Prize 2010
Liu Xiaobo
The Nobel Peace Prize 2010
Born: 28 December 1955, Changchun, China
Died: 13 July 2017, Shenyang, China
Residence at the time of the award: China
Prize motivation: “for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”
Sentenced for the Crime of Speaking
Liu Xiaobo was born on the 28th of December 1955. As a young man he studied literature and philosophy, and worked as a literary critic and university lecturer in Beijing. He took a doctorate in 1988, after which he was a guest lecturer at universities in Europe and the USA.
Liu Xiaobo took part in the student protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989. For that he was sentenced to two years in prison. Later he served three years in a labour camp for having criticised China's one-party system.
For over twenty years, Liu has fought for a more open and democratic China. He demands that the Chinese authorities comply with Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution, which lays down that the country's citizens enjoy “freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration”.
In 2008, Liu was a co-author of Charta 08, a manifesto which advocates the gradual shifting of China's political and legal system in the direction of democracy. He was arrested in December 2008, and sentenced a year later to eleven years' imprisonment for undermining the state authorities. Liu has constantly denied the charges. “Opposition is not the same as undermining”, he points out.
credit@www.nobelprize.org
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Nobel Peace Prize 2011
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
The Nobel Peace Prize 2011
Born: 29 October 1938, Monrovia, Liberia
Residence at the time of the award: Liberia
Role: President of Liberia
Prize motivation: “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work”
Africa’s first female democratically elected head of state
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent efforts to promote peace and her struggle for women’s rights. She is the first female democratically elected head of state in Africa. Johnson Sirleaf came to power in 2005, creating peace and economic progress in the country. She strengthened women’s rights, expanded freedom of speech and became an example for other African leaders.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had studied in the US, where she took a Master’s degree in Public Administration. She returned to her home country and served as Minister of Finance, but the government was overthrown in a military coup in 1980. Forced into exile, she worked for the UN Development Program for Africa and the Development Fund for Women.
Johnson Sirleaf lost the presidential election in 1997 to the corrupt Charles Taylor, but after he was forced to flee the country, she won the presidential election in 2005.
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Leymah Gbowee
Nobel Peace Prize 2011
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Tawakkol Karman
Nobel Peace Prize 2011
Tawakkol Karman
The Nobel Peace Prize 2011
Born: 7 February 1979, Ta'izz, Yemen
Residence at the time of the award: Yemen
Prize motivation: “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work”
Freedom of expression and democracy in Yemen
Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist, was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize from the Arab world. She shared the award with two Liberian women, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, for their non-violent efforts to promote peace and their struggle for women’s rights.
She led several protests against the dictatorial regime of President Saleh, calling for democracy and freedom of speech. She founded the organisation Women Journalists without Chains, and was imprisoned and persecuted on account of her active engagement.
Tawakkol Karman came forward as a courageous leadership figure during the Arab Spring in 2011 and was praised for her efforts to promote reconciliation between Sjia and Sunni Muslims and between Islam and other religions. Like Iranian Shirin Ebadi, Peace Prize laureate for 2003, she maintained that Islam is no obstacle to the full acceptance of women in every sphere of society.
Kailash Satyarthi
Nobel Peace Prize 2014
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Malala Yousafzai
Nobel Peace Prize 2014
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Juan Manuel Santos
Nobel Peace Prize 2016
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Denis Mukwege
Nobel Peace Prize 2018
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Nadia Murad Basee Taha
Nobel Peace Prize 2018
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Abiy Ahmed Ali
Nobel Peace Prize 2019
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Maria Ressa
Nobel Peace Prize 2021
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Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov
Nobel Peace Prize 2021
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Ales Bialiatski
Nobel Peace Prize 2022
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Narges Mohammadi
Nobel Peace Prize 2023
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