Since the first award in 1901 year, conferment of the Nobel Prizes has engendered criticism and controversies.Nobel population 1901–50: anatomy of a scientific elite. 5 November 2001. physicsworld.com. Retrieved 20 March 2011."A Nobel calling: 100 years of controversy ", The Independent, 14 October 2005. After his death in 1896, the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel established that an annual prize be awarded for service to humanity in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.
In accordance with Nobel's will, the Nobel Peace Prize is selected by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a five-member committee appointed by the Parliament of Norway unlike all the other awards chosen by the Swedish Nobel Committees. Nobel Peace Prize controversies often reach beyond the academic community. Criticisms that have been leveled against some of the awards include allegations that they were politically motivated, premature, or guided by a faulty definition of what constitutes work for peace.Controversies and Criticisms. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved 20 March 2011.
Controversies per year
1906: Roosevelt The first head of state to receive a Nobel Peace Prize was United States president Theodore Roosevelt for his arbitration to stop the Russo–Japanese War. Roosevelt was previously militarily involved in Cuba during the 1898 Spanish–American War and had sent fleets to the Caribbean during his presidency. The New York Times wrote "a broad smile illuminated the face of the globe when the prize was awarded … to the most warlike citizen of these United States". A similar comment came from Spaniard Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who got the Nobel Medicine Prize of that year.
1935: von Ossietzky The prize of 1935 was retroactively awarded one year later to Carl von Ossietzky, a German pacifist who had been convicted of high treason and espionage for exposing German rearmament. In an unprecedented move, King Haakon VII of Norway was absent from the award ceremony, two committee members resigned in protest, and the Norwegian conservative press, including leading daily Aftenposten, condemned giving the award to a convicted criminal. Ossietzky, interned in the concentration camp Esterwegen and severely ill with tuberculosis, accepted the award by letter but was prevented from traveling to Oslo. The award led to Adolf Hitler's forbidding any German to receive any of the Nobel Prizes in the future, and Ossietzky's prize was not allowed to be mentioned in the German press.
1973: Kissinger and Lê
The 1973 prize went to North Vietnamese communist leader Lê Đức Thọ and United States Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger "for the 1973 Paris Peace Accords intended to bring about a cease-fire in the Vietnam War and a withdrawal of the American forces". Thọ later declined the prize, on grounds that such "bourgeois sentimentalities" were not for him and that the Paris Peace Accords were not being adhered to in full. Kissinger was also privately skeptical about sharing the prize, saying to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, "I figure it like Groucho Marx said, 'any club that took him in he would not want to join'. I would say that anything Lê Đức Thọ is eligible for, there must be something wrong with it."
North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in April 1975 and reunified the country whilst Lê Đức Thọ was still in government. Thọ had also been in government during the Tet Offensive, a Viet Cong surprise assault that killed 7,721 civilians, destroyed 75,000 homes, and displaced over 670,000 people. Kissinger's history included the secret 1969–1975 bombing campaign against Khmer Rouge and North Vietnamese Army troops in Cambodia, U.S. involvement in Operation Condor—a mid-1970s campaign of kidnapping and murder coordinated among the intelligence and security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile (see details), Paraguay, and Uruguay—as well as the death of French nationals under the Chilean junta. He also supported the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, resulting in the de facto partition of the island. Kissinger has been cited as being responsible for the deaths of between 3 million and 4 million people during his eight-year term in office. According to Irwin Abrams in 2001, this prize was the most controversial to date. Two Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigned in protest.
The American press also reacted with consternation to the award. The New York Times dubbed it the "Nobel War Prize", and The Washington Post quoted retired diplomat George Ball as saying that on the evidence "The Norwegians must have a sense of humour." The well-known comedian and political satirist Tom Lehrer said: "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize." When the award was announced, hostilities were continuing. Kissinger did not attend the award ceremony in Oslo over concern that it would be targeted by anti-war protest groups. He requested that the prize money be donated to a scholarship fund for US servicemen killed or missing in Indochina. In 1975, as Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces, he offered to return the medal, an offer not accepted by the Nobel Committee.
1979: Mother Teresa Mother Teresa (born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu) received the 1979 prize for "work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace". However, the 1979 laureate was a subject of numerous controversies. Critics, particularly Canadian academics Serge Larivée, Geneviève Chénard, and Carole Sénéchal, argued that despite receiving millions in donations, her clinics provided inadequate medical care, lacking proper diagnosis, nutrition, and pain relief. They contended that Mother Teresa viewed suffering as spiritually valuable, believing the sick should suffer like Christ, and that donated funds could have been used to create modern palliative care instead. Journalist Christopher Hitchens echoed and amplified these criticisms, accusing her of glorifying poverty, misleading donors, opposing women's empowerment and reproductive rights, and acting hypocritically by accepting advanced medical care for herself. He argued that her primary mission was religious expansion rather than alleviating poverty.
1991: Aung San Suu Kyi In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi received the prize "for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights." Her party had got most of the vote in the 1990 Burmese general election, but the military refused to yield power and placed her under house arrest for years. In 2016, her party won again. While she was barred constitutionally from becoming the president of Burma, the position of State Counsellor was created for her. In 2017, there were calls to take her prize away because of her reaction to the Rohingya genocide. On 14 February 2025, a court in Argentina, acting on a petition from the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK and citing universal jurisdiction, issued arrest warrants against several officials in Myanmar, including Aung San Suu Kyi, on charges of "genocide and crimes against humanity" against the Rohingyas.
1992: Menchú The 1992 prize went to Rigoberta Menchú of Guatemala for "her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples". The prize was controversial because the prize-winner's memoirs, which had brought her to fame, turned out to be partly fictitious.
1994: Arafat, Peres and Rabin The 1994 prize went to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East". Kåre Kristiansen, a member of the Nobel Committee, resigned in protest at Arafat's award, citing his sponsorship of terrorism through the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and calling him the "world's most prominent terrorist".
2000: Kim The 2000 prize went to Kim Dae-jung "for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular". Criticisms argued that Kim made a historical event in North Korea, which was tainted significantly by allegations that at least several hundred million dollars had been paid to Pyongyang. His chief of staff, Park Jie-won, was sentenced to twelve years in prison in 2003 for, among other charges, his role in the Hyundai payment to North Korea for the North–South summit. Also in order to persuade North Korea to attend the summit, several "unconverted long-term prisoners" kept by South Korea were released and returned to North Korea.
2002: Carter The 2002 prize went to Jimmy Carter for "decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development". The announcement of the award came shortly after the US House and Senate authorized President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq in order to enforce UN Security Council resolutions requiring that Baghdad give up weapons of mass destruction. Asked if the selection of the former president was a criticism of Bush, Gunnar Berge, head of the Nobel Prize Committee, said, "With the position Carter has taken on this, it can and must also be seen as criticism of the line the current US administration has taken on Iraq." Carter declined to comment on the remark in interviews, saying that he preferred to focus on the work of the Carter Center.
2004: Maathai The 2004 prize went to Wangari Maathai "for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace". Controversially, she was reported by the Kenyan newspaper The Standard and Radio Free Europe to have stated that HIV/AIDS was originally developed by Western scientists in order to depopulate Africa. She later denied these claims, although The Standard stood by its reporting.Sindelar, Daisy (10 December 2004). "Africa's First Female Nobel Peace Laureate Accepts Award Amid Controversy Over AIDS Remarks". Rferl.org. Retrieved 5 August 2013. Additionally, in a Time magazine interview, she hinted that she believed HIV had a non-natural origin, saying that someone knows where it came from and that it "did not come from monkeys"."10 Questions: Wangari Maathai". Time (10 October 2004). Retrieved 20 March 2011.
2009: Obama
The 2009 prize went to U.S. president Barack Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". The award, given just nine months into Obama's first presidential term, received criticism that it was undeserved, premature, politically motivated, and wishful. Quoted in Obama himself said that he felt "surprised" by the win and did not consider himself worthy of the award, but nonetheless accepted it."Obama: Nobel Peace Prize 'a call to action. NBC News (9 October 2009). Retrieved 10 December 2010."Remarks by the President on Winning the Nobel Peace Prize". . 9 October 2009. Retrieved 9 October 2009. Obama's peace prize was called a "stunning surprise" by The New York Times. Much of the surprise arose from the fact that nominations for the award had been due by 1 February 2009, only 12 days after Obama took office. In an October 2011 interview, Thorbjørn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, was asked whether Obama had lived up to the prize, and replied:
In 2015, Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute (who sat in on the committee's meetings but did not have a vote), wrote in his memoir, Secretary of Peace, that he regretted giving the prize to Obama. The committee "thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn't have this effect", Lundestad told the Associated Press, though he fell short of calling the award a mistake. "In hindsight, we could say that the argument of giving Obama a helping hand was only partially correct", Lundestad wrote. Critics also argued that the award was a symbolic rejection of the George W. Bush Administration.
2010: Liu