Early in the morning on Friday, Oct. 11, media outlets lit up with the announcement that the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Founded in 1997 and based at The Hague, the OPCW is currently organizing intergovernmental efforts to inspect the alleged chemical weapons sites of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Most commentators, however, had been rooting for a far different candidate: 16-year-old Pakistani education-rights advocate Malala Yousafzai, the prospective frontrunner among this year’s 259 nominees. Yousafzai’s loss demonstrates that winning the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t mean much anymore—and that’s something that should bother us.
While the Nobel Committee’s decision to honor the OPCW appears unlikely to provoke the degree of controversy that has confronted past laureates (including Yassir Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres in 1994, to say nothing of President Obama in 2009), this year’s choice seems altogether too convenient. And although the Committee expressly denied that Assad’s violations of international law influenced the decision to award the prize to a chemical weapons watchdog organization, the timing is difficult to ignore. Still, to raise the counterpoint: In the words of Dashiell Bennett of The Atlantic Wire, what could be more warranted than a robust condemnation of Assad’s behavior in “the first year in decades that chemical weapons were deployed in battle on a large scale”?
But the problem with a Nobel Peace Prize so attuned to current events, and awarded chiefly on that basis, isn’t necessarily that it’s premature or undeserved. Rather, the problem is that doing so gives far too much sway to headlines, hype, and media sensation. Many Western media outlets have exhaustively focused global attention upon every wary step of the political tango danced by presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin around an agreement on Syrian intervention, every dissembling denial of wrongdoing by Assad, and every rankled opinion rendered by punditry and politicians preceding the UN resolution that provided the OPCW its mandate. In a climate where media saturation directs international attention, what hope is there for issues that lie outside the limelight? Bringing awareness to injustice shouldn’t be reduced to pageantry wherein only the most headlined problem gets the win. The Nobel Peace Prize should promote a forum on solutions to the most heinous humanitarian issues that affect the international community. But the humanitarian crises in need of the most attention are the often the marginalized, intractable, and ongoing ones about which mainstream media tells us least.
Far more than not being able to satisfy everyone (an impossibility), the trouble with awarding the Prize this year—or any year—is that worldwide opinion matters little in the decision. Which did we, the world, need more? A reaffirmation that the use of chemical weapons against a civilian population constitutes an unacceptable rejection of humanitarian norms? Or proof that historically, culturally, and politically marginalized individuals can, through their courage and persistence, combat oppression and promote women’s educational rights—ideals in which we have a daily stake? Ultimately, individuals, activist groups, and NGOs don’t just actively impact humanitarian crises; they also demand the world’s active attention to daily injustices for which a headline would be little revelation but about which little is being done. The Peace Prize has an obligation to better facilitate this process.
But there’s a redemptive element here too. The funding and public attention that come not just with winning but with being nominated are the Prize’s perennial value. The positive attention brought to the individuals and organizations laboring to address injustices that persist outside the mainstream media limelight is immeasurably redeeming given the demonstrable influences that affect the awarding of the prize itself. Malala, for one, appears to be capitalizing on her brush with fame the right way. Not only has she demurred when asked if she deserved to win, but she has harnessed the publicity generated by her nomination to launch the Malala Fund, a nonprofit that’s raising money and awareness for marginalized female students in Pakistan. Malala is living out her own maxim, expressed in an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, that “we don’t realize the importance of anything until it is snatched from our hands.” Here’s hoping this year’s other nominees, who included Congolese gynecologist and sexual assault victim activist Dr. Denis Mukwege, the first-ever female attorney general of Guatemala Dr. Claudia Paz y Paz, and three female Russian human rights activists, will follow her example.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 94 times, to 100 individuals and 25 organizations. But it’s the former who provide us with the faces, narratives, and voices that can inspire others to action. In her Daily Show interview, Yousafzai speaks with all the idealistic fervor of a 16-year-old, yes. But she also speaks also with a conviction that resonates beyond any award and, more importantly, beyond the easy immediacy of the headlines.
As Alfred Nobel himself stated, “I would like to help dreamers.” The Nobel Committee would do well to take note.
