By Fredrik S. Heffermehl
OSLO, Dec 9 2013 (Columnist Service)

A March 2012 decision by the Swedish authority supervising foundations is a ticking box of dynamite under the Nobel Peace Prize. Even presented in an official, open document, the decision has not reached the general public and become the news story it actually is.

The order implies that the decision to award the 2013 Nobel to the bureaucrats enforcing the ban on chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), is illegal.

It is true, as the citation of OPCW mentions, that disarmament was important to Alfred Nobel. But why is it the secretive committee’s best-kept secret that Nobel´s will included a recipe for a weapons-free world?

Nobel did not believe in civilising war, reducing a weapon here and an army there; he was quite specific when, in his 1895 will, he described a prize for “the champions of peace” seeking to abolish all weapons in all nations, as an alternative to militarism and military forces. With terms like the “brotherhood of [disarmed] nations,” he used language that anyone familiar with the history of the peace movement will recognise.

Fredrik S. Heffermehl

Even though its secretary is a historian, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chooses to ignore that the kind of recipients Nobel had in mind were the Austrian baroness Bertha von Suttner, author of the bestseller “Lay Down Your Arms”, and her political friends.

In the last years of his life Nobel joined Suttner´s Society of Friends of Peace and gave substantial financial support to this Austrian society and the (still existing) International Peace Bureau, and – very important to understanding his purpose in setting up a peace prize – promised Suttner to “do something great” for her movement.

My book, “The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted”, (available in English, Chinese, Finnish, Swedish and Spanish) contains solid documentation of Nobel´s actual intentions, and shows that the Norwegian Parliament has misused the task Nobel entrusted to it: to appoint a five-member committee of persons devoted to Nobel´s peace plan.

For years, Norwegian politicians have used the prize to pursue their own ideas and purposes. Last year´s prize that went to the European Union, the 2009 prize for U.S. President Barack Obama, the 2010 prize for Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, the 2011 prize for Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – almost all of the prizes awarded in the last two decades have failed to respect Nobel´s will.

Instead of appointing a committee dedicated to the peace ideas described in the will Parliament is, with few exceptions, using the coveted seats as a bonus to reward retired parliamentarians. In Norway attitudes have shifted away from Nobel’s aims. Politicians strongly loyal to the U.S. and NATO are obviously unsuited to manage a prize for peace by disarmament, and the members ought to resign.

After six years I have to state that my conclusions are indisputable – and they have not in fact been disputed. But it is of little consequence. Norwegian politicians behave as if they were above the law and feel confident that the courts, as well as public authorities and the media, will let them get away with their mischief.

This is clearly illustrated by the fate of a complaint I lodged with the Swedish authority that supervises foundations. The Norwegian politicians did not like the idea of being scrutinised and told the Swedish authorities to back off, since “the Nobel Committee is independent and shall take orders from no one.”

The Swedish authority responded that this view was clearly incorrect, and in its order placed the Norwegian peace prize committee under Swedish control. It further expected the Swedish Nobel Foundation to supervise in order to ensure that its Norwegian subsidiary complied with the will. A sensational decision, in my view, that so far has not received any public attention.

My research makes it clear that the Norwegian awarders have never spent much time brooding over what Nobel must have intended. The description of the mandate in the will has been entirely forgotten. The secrets of the private diaries of Gunnar Jahn, a former committee chair (serving from 1942 to 1966), a unique and most revealing crack in the tight secrecy surrounding the committee´s work, confirm this.

Entries in the diaries, published for the first time in my book, show that all of Jahn´s attempts to remind the committee of Nobel and of the purpose of the prize fell flat, and that, despite a couple of threats to resign, Jahn put up with this for 24 years.

A 2001 article by the powerful committee secretary, Geir Lundestad, confirms that the committee feels full freedom to develop its own prize and even make its own definition of “peace” – obviously unaware of the legal obligation to check Nobel´s own description of who should be recipients of his prize!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has many opportunities that permit unopposed dissemination of a falsified version of Nobel´s visionary prize. When challenged to debate the purpose in public, in the media, they do not respond or they refuse to offer honest arguments; it is either silence or nonsense.

One can only conclude that the Norwegian awarders (Parliament and the Nobel Committee) are adamantly unwilling to respect the law and Nobel´s intentions.

This experience affects my impression of Scandinavian democracy, of its media, public debate, and the integrity of our public authorities and the rule of law. It is a paradox of sorts that these are the very values that the Nobel Committee chair, Thorbjørn Jagland, has the primary responsibility for promoting in Europe as the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

The Norwegian government, always happy with the misuse of Nobel´s prize, is now seeking a new term for Jagland in the Council of Europe. When approached in the campaign for reelection, member countries should ask Jagland two vital questions.

First, does he acknowledge that by law a will is a binding legal instrument?

Second, what does he think about Nobel and does he understand that he intended his prize to support a new system of international relations, one without national armies?

They are not likely to hear expressions of regret. Whether Jagland continues to refuse to respond, or gives untrue answers, the member countries should draw their own conclusions.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Leaders of the European Union (EU) will gather in Oslo this Monday to receive an increasingly controversial Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist, established the five prizes by his will in 1895 and there is a growing international awareness that his prize “for the champions of peace” does not go to the recipients Nobel had in mind.

Tomas Magnusson

There is, of course, always an element of peacemaking in people and nations getting together, talking, and making agreements, but nowhere has the EU declared a political ambition to promote the global peace order of demilitarised nations that Nobel described with unmistakable clarity in his will. Quite to the contrary, the EU has a multitude of programmes for development of arms and armies, a defence agency, battle groups and arms production and trade.

In the last weeks of November four laureates ­ the International Peace Bureau (IPB, the 1910 laureate), Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Perez Esquivel, protested against the EU prize as unlawful, and the IPB demanded an intervention from the Swedish authorities.

Norwegian politicians are entitled to have their opinion on the EU as a contributor to “peace” and they are free to throw great parties for political friends. But they are not free to use the entrusted money and the prestige of the Nobel prizes to promote their own agendas. A will is a legally binding instrument, yet, in the last decade, the prize has become totally disconnected from Nobel’s disarmament purpose, with the allocation of prizes to Finnish politician Martti Ahtisaari (2008), U.S. president Barack Obama (2009), for democracy in China (2010) and for the EU (2012). By insisting on using their own, entirely open concept of “peace” as their criterion, Norwegian politicians have taken over the prize and use it for any purpose they like.

In the will, Nobel formulated his purpose in unmistakable terms: he wished to free the world from the scourge of militarism and wars and ensure that resources were used for the benefit of people rather than feeding the voracious appetite of arms races.

Nobel gave his peace prize to the world, wishing to foster innovative changes that would “confer the greatest benefit on mankind”. At the time Norwegian politicians were in the vanguard of a global peace order and support for the peace movement, and he believed the Norwegian Parliament would be his best help in appointing a five-member committee devoted to the promotion of his visionary peace plan.

Today this parliament, conditioned by the Cold War and an increasingly militarist Western culture, holds the direct opposite view of the one Nobel wished to support. They appear unable even to envisage the global peace plan that Nobel wished them to promote. It is a breach of the testament and the law that can no longer be tolerated when the Norwegian Parliament does not appoint protagonists of the Nobel approach to peacemaking.

Just as bad as the betrayal of Nobel and the peace movement entitled to his support is the betrayal of normal democratic practice and the rule of law. Over five years have now passed since a former vice president of the IPB, Fredrik S. Heffermehl, a Norwegian lawyer and author, rediscovered the true purpose and encouraged the Nobel Committee to immediately rethink its task and responsibility as managers of the prize. He stated that Nobel established “a peace prize, not a prize for the environment, not for economics and not for humanitarian work…Nobel endeavoured a radical change in international politics”.

Today, Heffermehl says, one thing is clear: “Today’s Norwegian Nobel awarders have reacted with direct hostility to being informed on Nobel and his actual purpose. For five years they have not once showed the least interest in Alfred Nobel and his peace vision. (…) This is made even more outrageous by the fact that the present chair of the Nobel committee is also the secretary-general of the Council of Europe and his handling of the Nobel Prize is a total affront to all principles he should promote in that capacity.”

In March 2012 Heffermehl succeeded in obtaining a direct order from the Foundations Authority of Sweden requesting the awarders to respect the description of purpose in the Nobel testament, and further ordering the Nobel Foundation to oversee all awards, including the peace prize. Still, the Norwegian Parliament and Nobel Committee continue with unabated force to reward a prize for “peace” in general and ignore the precise purpose specified in the will.

But now the IPB, one of the worlds oldest and most comprehensive peace networks, in a request to Swedish authorities on Nov. 22, have taken the first steps to protect the legitimate rights of “the champions of peace”. The IPB, which sprang from the same ideological and political roots as the Peace Prize, won its Nobel in 1910, and 13 of its leaders have received the prize over the years.

The legitimate Nobel winner should be an opponent rather than a proponent of military programmes and policies. The world spends exorbitant amounts on a busted model of security and an illusion that it can be achieved in confrontation rather than cooperation. To use the peace prize to promote the visionary peace plan of Nobel would be the best thing that could happen to the poor and unhappy of the world, to the environment, human rights, democracy, women and children, victims of war ­ everywhere, every year.

Tomas Magnusson is co-president of the International Peace Bureau.