The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s chairman has been removed from his post for the first time in the award’s 114-year history. He’s been criticized over a number of the panel’s controversial picks, like US president and the EU.
Ousted Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian Labor
prime minister, had been in charge of the Nobel Peace Prize
Committee for six years before he was voted out on Tuesday. He
will remain a member of the committee, but the leading role has
been passed on to the panel's deputy chairman, Kaci Kullmann
Five, a former conservative party leader.
“There’s a new committee with new people, and new people can
always lead to new considerations,” Kullmann Five told
journalists. “Jagland has been a good leader for the
committee for six years.”
New Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, responsible for selecting #NobelPeacePrize Laureates: Kaci Kullmann Five http://t.co/UXw2YP0FGR
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) March 3, 2015
Three out of six prize winners chosen under Thorbjoern Jagland have raised controversy.
Jagland’s first year as chairman in 2009 saw the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to US President Barack Obama, who at that time had only been in office for nine months.
Obama won the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to
strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between
peoples," while the US was engaged in two lengthy wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as heightened US drone strikes on
suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen.
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A Norwegian diplomat revealed in 2014, that the Obama
administration itself was not happy with being given the award.
"My colleague in Washington received a reprimand from Obama's
chief of staff [Rahm Emanuel, at the time]. The word 'fawning'
was used," Morten Wetland, who was Norway’s United Nations
delegate from 2008 to 2012, wrote in an article published in the
Norwegian daily Dagens Naeringsliv and cited by AFP.
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The Nobel Prize Committee’s 2012 choice of the European Union as
the winner of the award has also raised quite a few eyebrows.
Critics pointed out Jagland’s other role as head of the European
Council as a potential conflict of interest. Many argued the
prize was undeserved because of the EU’s economic and foreign
policy failures.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and two other Nobel Peace
Prize-winners protested the decision in an open letter.
“The EU is clearly not ‘the champion of peace’ that Alfred
Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will,” the letter read.
“The Norwegian Nobel committee has redefined and remodeled
the prize in a manner that it is not consistent with the
law.”
READ MORE: Nobel Peace Prize brews hostility as winners renounce EU’s award
A 2010 award to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo led to Beijing
freezing diplomatic relations with Oslo.
READ MORE: No peace as China slams 2010 Nobel winner
Jagland's removal has led to speculations over how much the prize
is influenced by politics, having been replaced by another former
party leader.
Nobel Committee members are appointed by Norway’s parliament
according to the power balance there. Right-wing parties won
elections in 2013, which gave them a 3-2 majority over Labor on
the Peace Prize panel.
"This can be interpreted as an attempt by the rightist
government to exert more political control over the committee
than has been customary," Nobel historian Asle Sveen told
AFP.
There have been calls for the Nobel committee to be open to
foreigners to boost its scope and preserve its independence from
shifts in Norwegian politics.