Norway considers non-Norwegians for Nobel panel
Print Edition
WITH the 2014 Nobel Prize announcements around the corner, Norway is considering shaking up the five-member committee that selects the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Critics say the prestigious panel should no longer be limited to retired Norwegian politicians and have suggested broadening the pool of potential judges to people from other walks of life, and even non-Norwegians.
This wouldn’t affect this year’s winner, to be announced October 10 by chairman Thorbjoern Jagland, but could influence next year’s award as Jagland and two other members face re-election.
“Right now we are all former politicians, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, a Nobel judge from the right-wing Progress Party.
Questions surrounding the committee’s makeup have gained prominence amid criticism of some recent choices.
While Nobel Peace Prizes are almost always controversial, under Jagland’s leadership the committee has been accused of poor timing.
The 2012 award to the European Union cited the bloc’s historical role in keeping the peace in postwar Europe but didn’t come at its finest hour as the bloc was in the midst of a crippling debt crisis.
And the 2009 award to Barack Obama honored a president who had not been in office long enough to make an impact.
“He is the first peace prize winner who celebrated by starting a drone war,” said Sverre Valen, a Norwegian lawmaker who also suggested that some of the Nobel judges should be drawn from overseas “to help the credibility of the prize.”
Valen nominated former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for this year’s peace prize for his disclosures of secret surveillance programs.
Earlier this year, Norwegian lawmakers touted former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as possible future Nobel judges.
But Kristian Berg Harpviken, a prominent Nobel-watcher and head of the PRIO peace institute in Oslo, said appointing foreign members would inevitably open a new discussion about which countries and continents are represented.
He suggested that the committee expand its pool of candidates in Norway.
Harpviken tries to predict the winner every year — though is rarely correct. His favorites for this year’s include Snowden, Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai and Pope Francis.
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