The exclusion of Mahatma Gandhi from the elite list of Nobel laureates, despite being nominated for the accolade multiple times, remains the biggest blemish of the Nobel Committee. The saint who led the non-violence for India's freedom would have been the perfect candidate for it
Every year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee requests reputed academics, scientists, social activists, politicians and Nobel laureates to submit nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize – arguably, the most prestigious accolade of the planet. This year, amid the post COVID-19 inflation, warnings of environmental crisis, severe political polarisation and Russia-Ukraine war, there were 343 nominations intended to honour the extraordinary contribution to humanity and welfare of the society.
Out of those nominations, the Nobel Committee selected Ales Bialiatski from Belarus and two organisations – Memorial from Russia and the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL) – as the winners of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. These human rights champions were recognised for their outstanding effort in documenting war crimes, human rights abuses and exploitation of power.
Ales Bialiatski founded the Human Rights Centre in response to a brutal crackdown of street protests by Belarus's authoritarian government in 1996.
Bialiatski is currently being held in prison without trial.
Memorial had worked for more than 30 years in highlighting the millions of innocent people executed, imprisoned or persecuted in the Soviet era. CCL is one of Ukraine's leading human rights organisations founded by the leaders of human rights groups from nine post-Soviet countries to create a cross-border resource support centre in Kyiv in 2007.
The Nobel Committee's decision to recognise the vulnerable human rights advocates this year has been globally applauded.
This comes as rolling back of the rights of the human rights champions throughout the world. The annual report published by the United Nations pointed out that between May 1, 2021 and April 30, 2022, people in 42 countries across the world faced severe consequences for advocating human rights, highlighting a number of disturbing trends over the past year.
According to this report, the victims mainly included human rights defenders and journalists who suffered from reprisals and intimidation by States and non-State actors. The report further reveals that the victims were extra-judicially detained, unlawfully assassinated, targeted by restrictive legislation and surveilled both online and offline.
In addition, the annual world report of Human Rights Watch (HRW) conveys that human rights activists are going through one of the worst phases in contemporary time, especially due to the rise of autocratic and pseudo-democratic regimes in many countries in recent times.
Unlike this year, the Nobel Peace Prize has occasionally raised severe controversies over the years.
The utmost controversy associated with the prize in recent times is that of Barack Obama receiving the prestigious accolades in 2009 for his 'extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples', only nine months in office as the president of the United States of America.
In fact, President Obama himself seemed to be surprised to have been selected for the accolade and there were no celebrations at the White House. The discussion that an honour like Nobel peace prize should be 'earned and not won' filled the pages of reputed tabloids throughout the world.
The other mentionable controversies regarding the Nobel Peace Prize include the awarding of the accolade to former-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1994.
In fact, one member of the Nobel Committee resigned in protest of the decision as Arafat was previously involved in extra-judicial militant activities. The list of recent controversies involving the prize is long: be it pleas to revoke the Nobel Peace Prize of Aung San Suu Kyi (awarded 1991) amid her defence of the Burmese military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya in 2019 or the calls for re-consideration of the prize awarded to the Ethiopian politician, Abiy Ahmed, in 2019, because of the war crimes committed under his leadership in Tigray. Another controversial decision includes Wangari Maathai (awarded 2004), the Kenyan social, environmental and political activist in light of her controversial remarks regarding HIV- AIDS.
In addition, exclusion of Mahatma Gandhi from the elite list of Nobel laureates, despite being nominated for the accolade multiple times, remains the biggest blemish of the Nobel Committee.
The moral saint who successfully led the peaceful, non-violence movement against the colonial regime to attain Indian independence would have been the perfect candidate for it. However, several members of the Nobel Committee have publicly regretted this mishap at different instances.
The predicament as to why the Nobel Peace Prize frequently attracts controversies is worth exploring.
The main reason of the controversy could be that more often than not many nominees for the prize have been contemporary and highly controversial political and social thespians, and awarding of the prize to one (or more than one) of them raises the public focus on international and/or national conflicts.
Not often are the Nobel laureates unanimous global choices. Additionally, the procedure by which the members of the Nobel Committee are selected and the obscure way the laureates are selected have raised severe criticism on some occasions.
Coming back to this year's prize, the almost uncontroversial decision of the Nobel Committee acknowledged the contribution of human rights advocates in promoting peace and democracy. This accolade will give Ales Bialiatski as well as both human rights organisations better international visibility, and it will inspire a new generation of activists towards advocating the cause of human rights. Simultaneously, the global acceptance of this year's Nobel Committee's decision will augment the creditability of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr Joshi is senior scientist and neurobiologist, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
A version of this article appears in the print on October 17, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
