TFF Associates & Themes Blog

By Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden, February 11, 2016

Thanks to tabloidization – a concept rapidly integrated into even quality mainstream media – you’ve probably heard that Donald Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2016.

Well, that prize has been thrown out to so many who didn’t qualify according Alfred Nobel’s will – not even with a very liberal interpretation.

But there are two things you may not have seen which have very far-reaching implications and are much more news worthy.

Court case against the Nobel Foundation

One is that three individuals and an NGO filed a brief to open a court case against the Nobel Foundation – and thus implicitly the Nobel Committee in Oslo – to the Stockholm District Court in December 2015 – all about it here.

It’s never happened before and is the result of 8 years of intensive research and public information that you can read about at the Nobel Peace Prize Watch – NPPW.

Its focal case is the prize awarded to the EU about which Desmond Tutu and others have stated that the EU was “obviously not one of champions of peace that Nobel had in mind.”

Open list of nominees for 2016 who do qualify

The other one is that a list has been published of 25 qualified nominees with the full nomination text and argument as to why they meet the criteria of Alfred Nobel.

The revolutionary thing is that this breaks the secrecy that has hitherto been practised by the Nobel Committee.

From now on the world can watch, compare and judge about the future decisions made by the Nobel Committee.

It’s a transparency that shall ensure that the Norwegian Nobel Committee will stick to the original purpose.

A prize intended to prevent war by global removal of weapons cannot be changed into a general “do good” prize or given to warmongers and champions of violence and weapons.

Thus 25 candidates on one list (and others outside it) and you may wonder if somebody not worthy of the prize will yet again receive it this year.

Secondly, this list creates a broad public awareness of the existence of people and movements around the world who devote their lives to the Nobel goal of genuine disarmament, abolition of war and making peace by peaceful means – the latter stated in the UN Charter’s Chapter 1.

Nobel’s Peace Prize can now be resurrected and taken back to the worlds’ peace people and become what it truly is: the most prestigious prize on earth.

And that deserves, we’d like to believe, a bit more research and judgement from serious mass media than the tabloid-like focus on the bizarre nomination of Donald Trump.