On peace

Thoughts from the Nobel Peace Center

The ancient Greek word for peace is eirene: a pause in fighting, typically lasting only one or two generations.

Throughout most of human history, it can be argued that the antithesis of peace is indeed war – and that peace is the absence of war. When Alfred Nobel died in 1896, he wanted the peace prize to be awarded to the person “who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses”. Most of these are focused around the idea of “no war”; I don’t think people were thinking much about peace beyond war before the 20th Century – it simply wasn’t a possibility.

In 1901 the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Dunant, founder of the International Red Cross (an organization that has won the prize twice, in 1917 and 1944). In the early stages of the award’s founding the award went to people and organizations that advocated for “no wars”: notably, Woodrow Wilson received the prize in 1919, after he conceptualised and founded the League of Nations (we all know how that one turned out).

After two world wars, as “global peace” seemed to be more certain, the definition of “peace” had to be expanded: there wasn’t much constant global conflict, but yet there was a lack of true peace – conflict still showed itself in crime and suffering. An idea that peace was more than just a negative notion, a lack of something, to a more positive one, an active effort to better the world.

And thus Nobel Peace Prize winners have shifted towards people who advocate for human rights, for justice, in non-violent ways: Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela won their peace prizes for their work to end apartheid in South Africa; Martin Luther King Jr for his work in the civil rights movement; and John Hume and David Trimble, who shared the peace prize for their efforts in ending the conflict in Northern Ireland. Many more conflicts were regional rather than global in nature, and the recipients of the award has evolved to recognise that.

It is interesting to learn all this from visiting a museum, a place that has been specifically curated for one to gain understanding in a particular domain. At the end of the exhibit there was an interactive display where you could look at all the past Peace Prize winners, and I read about the hundreds of winners and their work. Some more-recent recipients that stood out to me:

1. Freedom of the press: The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to Maria Ressa of Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, both of whom worked on creating and maintaining independent newspapers in countries where the media is tightly controlled.

2. Environmental Justice: Wangari Maathai received the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in the Green Belt Movement – this isn’t inherently stopping any conflict at all, but the argument is that environmental justice promotes equality, which, in turn, reduces the need for conflict.

3. Sexual Violence: The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad for their work in helping victims of sexual violence and advocating for sexual violence as a war crime.

Over the years, the prize has also been awarded to politicians who have used their power to advocate for peace (supposedly). I’d say this is where most of the controversy regarding the Nobel Peace Prize lies; examples include Kim Dae-Jung (2000; a South Korean president who worked on relations with North Korea, it turned out that he had bribed large amounts of money for the prize), Barack Obama (2009; a US president that started multiple wars), and most recently, Abiy Ahmed Ali (2019; Ethiopian president who worked on relations with Eritrea, who launched a civil war in 2020). Especially when these politicians are still in power, they have the ability to very quickly change the status of peace.

I am grateful, though, that this is what we now struggle with. We no longer understand peace as merely a pause between war, and look towards something more ambitious. There is something very comforting about having something more than the silence of guns, to create societies where violence is less likely to emerge at all. Walking out of the Nobel Peace Center I was filled with a sense of hope: the world isn’t peaceful, and it may never be, but there is so much that can be done for peace, and there are people who truly believe in it and continue to work on it.

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Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

– Keeping quiet, Pablo Neruda