Friends and foes share Nobel Peace Prize

JAKARTA (JP): Commoners and presidents, humanitarians as well as revolutionaries, a baroness and a nun are among those who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Political adversaries have also shared the prize: North Vietnamese Le Duc Tho shared the prize in 1973 with U.S. Henry A. Kissinger; Egypt's president Mohammad Anwar Sadat shared it with Israel prime minister Menachem Begin in 1978; ANC leader Nelson Mandela with South Africa's president Frederik Willem de Klerk in 1993; and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat with Israel foreign minister Shimon Peres and Israel prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994.

The disparate backgrounds of the individuals and organizations who have won the prize reflects the shift in the meaning of peace since the day Alfred Nobel announced his plan in 1893 to set up a prize to be awarded to "him or her who would have brought about the greatest step toward advancing the pacification of Europe".

In the first year of the prize, up to World War I, it was awarded to pioneers of organized peace work. Many were parliamentarians and leaders of associations committed in particular to international arbitration.

Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner of Austria, the first of nine women to receive the award, for example, won the prize in 1905 for her peace efforts in one of the most militaristic countries in Europe.

In the following year U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt won the price for drawing up the 1905 peace treaty between Russia and Japan. He was also the first of six presidents to be awarded the prize.

Since World War II, the range of laureates has been broader. The protection of human rights has been widely recognized as serving the cause of peace, hence the inclusion of more human rights activists in the list of winners. Since the 1960s, many campaigners for human rights have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, though politicians, humanitarians and other promoters of peace still number among the winners.

The first human rights advocate to win the prize was Ferdinand Edouard Buisson, former professor at the Sorbonne, Paris, and founder and president of the League of Human Rights (Sorbonne des Droits de l'Homme). He shared the 1927 prize with Ludwig Quidde, historian, professor honoris causa, member of the Bavarian parliament, member of Germany's constituent assembly 1919 and delegate to numerous peace conferences.

Martin Luther King, Jr. of the U.S. was the first post-World War II human rights activist to win the award in 1964.

Until 1960, the peace prize was, almost without exception, awarded to persons or organizations in North America and western Europe. It has since become more global in scope, and each continent can now claim a number of winners.

The first non-American/non-Western European to win the prize was Albert John Lutuli of South Africa. Lutuli, president of the South African liberation movement, the African National Congress, won the prize in 1961.

Ironically, Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam, the first Asian to win the prize in 1973, declined it.

So far, Americans rank first in the number of recipients, followed by France and Great Britain in second and third places respectively. (lem)

Following is the list of nationals who have made it to the list of winners:

Nationality Number _______________________ Alsatian 1 American 17 Argentinean 2 Austrian 2 Belgian 3 British 7 Canadian 1 Costa Rican 1 Danish 1 Dutch 1 Egyptian 1 French 8 German 4 Guatemalan 1 Indian 1 Irish 1 Israeli 1 Italian 1 Japanese 1 Mexican 1 Myanmarese 1 N. Irish 2 N. Vietnamese 1 Norwegian 2 Polish 1 Russian 2 South African 3 Swedish 5 Swiss 3 Tibetan 1