The Nobel Peace Prize has just been awarded to Navi Pillay who is not, like last year’s laureate, pleading for the world’s largest military to attack her country. Nor is she, in the manner of various past laureates, waging war. Nor is she, like various past recipients, an admirable humanitarian working in a field unrelated to war. In fact, Navi Pillay has long been recognized as advancing the cause of peace. In 2025 she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in Australia. The foundation awarding that prize said:
“Judge Pillay has played a critical role in holding the tide against the global rise in impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity, advocating for accountability, the rule of law, and the protection of human dignity – from South Africa to Sri Lanka, Rwanda to Myanmar, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She has worked for justice at the centre point of some of humanity’s most brutal conflicts. Upon accepting the 2025 Sydney Peace Prize nomination, Navi Pillay stated: ‘This award is not mine alone. It belongs to all those who, across decades and continents, have stood up against injustice – often at great personal cost. It belongs to every survivor who found the courage to testify, to every human rights defender who remains steadfast in the face of threats and hostility, and to every young person who dares to believe in a better, more just world.’”
Pillay has been a prominent advocate for the rule of law in place of the rule of mass killing, and her work has been cited by advocates for peace in Palestine and for the elimination of weaponized drones. To have finally acknowledged someone whose work in any way addressed the horrors of Zionism is an encouraging sign from the Nobel Committee. Is Pillay “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses,” as required by the will of Alfred Nobel? The idea is not, as in most years, ridiculous. In this year’s leadup, there were even non-satirical commentators pushing for Donald Trump to get the prize for his war on Iran.
This is the second time in three years that the prize has gone to someone worthy. In 2024 as well, the prize was actually related to peace. The Nobel Committee has frequently given the peace prize to major war makers, and frequently to do-gooders whose work in a variety of fields has been unrelated to abolishing war. It has also often given the prize to opponents and victims of the targets of Western empire. But it has never given the prize to open advocates of war and fascistic government. Trump was never going to be given the prize directly. Last years’ awarding of a peace prize to someone asking Trump to attack her country was clearly an attempt to do the closest thing possible to giving Trump the prize himself.
Most winners in recent years have either been people who did nice things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the relevant work (Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai for promoting education, Liu Xiaobo for protesting in China, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for opposing climate change, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for economic development, etc.) or people who actually engaged in militarism and would have opposed the abolition or reduction of standing armies if asked, and one of whom said so in his acceptance speech (the European Union, Barack Obama, etc.). Of course, Henry Kissinger is remembered as a Nobel Peace laureate, while Gandhi never measured up.
The Nobel Committee outraged Trump because it gave the prize to U.S. President Barack Obama who, after delivering the only pro-war Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech ever, went to Hiroshima and told everyone there, including the survivors of the nuclear bombs who would later get the prize, that nuclear weapons would not be eliminated in his lifetime. He then proceeded to peddle familiar pro-war myths.
Three years ago the Nobel Committee awarded a peace prize that had Iran in the role of Venezuela. Since then, we have seen Iran bombed and threatened by the upholders of Western civilization. It would not have been surprising for this year’s award to have gone to some victim of the government of Cuba or Russia, China or North Korea, Greenland or perhaps the moon — some new target of the Pentagon. For the award to have gone instead to someone who has held up the rule of law in opposition to war and genocide is a huge step forward. Will this serve to direct future Nobel Peace Prizes further toward peace, to the point where someday they are being awarded to those advocating for the abolition of war? Or will it just keep the prize respectable as it is periodically used to advance the cause of imperialism? Time will tell.
The prizes that have brought us to this point have been a very mixed bag. In 2022, with its eyes on the news of the day, there was no question that the Committee would find some way to focus on Ukraine. But it steered clear of anyone seeking to reduce the risk of the at-the-time relatively minor war escalating or creating a nuclear apocalypse. It avoided anyone opposing both sides of the war, or anyone advocating for a ceasefire or negotiations or disarmament. It did not even make the choice one might have expected of picking an opponent of Russian warmaking in Russia and an opponent of Ukrainian warmaking in Ukraine. Instead, the Nobel Committee chose advocates for human rights and democracy in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. But the group in Ukraine was recognized for having “engaged in efforts to identify and document Russian war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population,” with no mention of war as a crime or of the possibility that the Ukrainian side of the war was committing atrocities. The Nobel Committee may have learned from Amnesty International’s experience of being widely denounced for documenting war crimes by the Ukrainian side.
In 2021 the prize went to advocates for human rights in Russia and in the Philippines. In 2020 the prize went to the World Food Programme. In 2019 the prize went to the President of Ethiopia and claimed some relationship to peace as he had been part of a peace agreement. But he was a president and commander of a military and not in any need of funding or support. He had engaged in all sorts of violence and human rights abuses, so that an advocate for human rights in his country could be given the prize if the U.S. government’s relationship to that country changes.
The 2018 prize did not go after war itself, but did go after sexual violence in wars. Not bad, relatively speaking. The 2013 prize went after chemical weapons. But stretching back through the years, we see a common practice of most often awarding a peace prize to either actual warmakers or to advocates for good causes that are not peace, as well as the practice of using the prize for Western political purposes that are hostile to peace. Although virtually every topic can be tangentially connected to war and peace, the avoidance of actual peace activism intentionally misses the point of the prize’s creation by Alfred Nobel and the influence of Bertha von Suttner.
The Nobel Peace Prize has largely devolved into a prize for random good things that don’t offend a culture dedicated to endless war. It has been awarded for journalism, for working against hunger, for protecting children’s rights or women’s rights, for teaching about climate change, and for opposing poverty. These are all good causes and can all be connected to war and peace. But these causes should go find their own prizes.
The Nobel Peace Prize is so devoted to awarding powerful officials and avoiding peace activism that it is often awarded to the wagers of wars, including Abiy Ahmed, Juan Manuel Santos, the European Union, and Barack Obama, among others. At times the prize has gone to opponents of some aspect of war, advancing the idea of reforming even while maintaining the institution of war. These awards have come closer to the purpose for which the prize was created, and include the 2017, 2018, and 2024 prizes.
The prize has also been used to advance the propaganda of some of the world’s major war makers. Awards like that of 2023 and 2025 have been used to denounce violations of human rights in non-Western nations targeted in the weapons-funding propaganda of Western nations. This record allows Western media outlets each year to speculate before the prize announcement on whether it will go to favorite propaganda topics, such as Alexei Navalny. The awarding of the prize has done nothing in recent years to diminish warmaking, and has perhaps done the opposite, with prizes going to opponents of the Russian government prior to escalations of the war in Ukraine.
In 2021, at a moment when the world’s largest weapons dealer, most frequent launcher of wars, dominant deployer of troops to foreign bases, greatest enemy of the International Criminal Court and the rule of law in international affairs, and supporter of oppressive governments — the U.S. government — was trumpeting a division between so-called democracies and non-democracies, the Nobel Committee chose to throw gas on the fire, declaring:
“Since its start-up in 1993, Novaja Gazeta has published critical articles on subjects ranging from corruption, police violence, unlawful arrests, electoral fraud and ‘troll factories’ to the use of Russian military forces both within and outside Russia. Novaja Gazeta’s opponents have responded with harassment, threats, violence, and murder.”
Also given the prize that year was a journalist from the Philippines already funded by CNN and by the U.S. government, in fact by a U.S. government agency often involved in funding military coups.
That there are always numerous candidates who plausibly meet the criteria of Alfred Nobel’s will each year and could have been appropriately awarded a Nobel Peace Prize has been established by the late great Norwegian peace activist Fredrik Heffermehl and by the War Abolisher Awards. World BEYOND War has created the War Abolisher Awards to fill the gap left by the Nobel Committee’s frequent abandonment of the cause of ending war.
This year’s award is a major improvement. The Nobel Committee tells us “Peace Requires Justice.” It does indeed. It also requires advocacy for peace. Some day that work may receive the peace prize as well.
- Originally published at World BEYOND War.