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The
Nobel Peace Prize for 2001
Speech given by The Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
- Gunnar Berge (Oslo, December 10, 2001)
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Copyright © The Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 2001.
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Ladies And Gentlemen,
and, not least, this year's and past years' Peace Prize Laureates,
Let me begin by extending a warm welcome to this year's special
Peace Prize award ceremony.
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2001 is awarded to the United Nations
(the UN) and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan for their work for
a better organized and more peaceful world.
This year we are celebrating the centenary of the Nobel Prizes,
including the Peace Prize. That makes it natural to consider historical
continuities where both the better organized world and the Nobel
Peace Prize are concerned. The idea that mankind has common interests,
and that this should find expression in some form or other of shared
government or rules, can be traced back to the Roman Empire. In
the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson was a vigorous early spokesman
for the belief that we people need each other. Such a belief means
that, whether as states or as individuals, we should treat one another
in ways that do not make us less able to live together. Tolerance,
justice and humanity are essential to the unity of mankind.
Alfred Nobel had no self-evident place in this tradition. At one
time, he believed that dynamite, his great invention, could do more
to prevent war than any peace movement. Nevertheless, the will he
made in 1895 was inspired by belief in the community of man. The
Peace Prize was to be awarded to the person who had done most for
“fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction
of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
Over the one hundred years that have passed since the first Peace
Prize was awarded in 1901, the foremost sustained intention of the
Norwegian Nobel Committee has been precisely that: of strengthening
international co-operation between states. In the period before
World War I, the majority of the Peace Prizes went to representatives
of the organized peace movement, either at the parliamentary level
through the Inter-Parliamentary Union, or at the more popular level
through the International Peace Bureau. But the prizes do not seem
to have helped much. The first world war broke out in 1914.
In the words of Woodrow Wilson, the first world war was to be “the
war to end wars”, and should “make the world safe for
democracy”. The new League of Nations was to be the body that
resolved conflicts before they led to war. Once again, the Norwegian
Nobel Committee sought to promote this greater commitment in international
co-operation. In the years between the wars, at least eight Peace
Prize Laureates had clear connections with the League of Nations,
although the League as such never in fact received the prize.
Again the world, and not least Wilson himself, was to be disappointed.
The 1919 Peace Prize Laureate was unable to persuade his own United
States to join the League of Nations. For would not binding obligations
to an international organization also limit American sovereignty?
Practically all of us wish to avoid the horrors of war. But we have
different notions about how this can come about. All non-pacifists
seek other things in addition to peace. There is not necessarily
anything wrong with that. Nor can peace be absolute. That was why
so many took up arms against Hitler Germany and the Emperor's Japan.
The horrors of World War II made the hopes people pinned on the
new world organization, the United Nations, all the greater. The
new organization was set even higher targets than the League of
Nations. The preamble to the UN Charter thus speaks of “We
the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime
has brought untold sorrow to mankind...”. There were many points
of organizational similarity between the League of Nations and the
UN. But the League of Nations had failed. The answer was to give
the Security Council a much more prominent role than the corresponding
council had had in the League of Nations. Universal membership would
be combined with special rights exercised by the Great Powers. The
Security Council could use military force to maintain peace. It
was even to have standing armed forces at its disposal, to be established
by member states in cooperation. We have not reached that goal even
today, fifty-six years on.
The UN has achieved many successes, not least in the humanitarian
and social fields, where its various special organizations have
done such important work. In some respects, the UN achieved more
than its founders believed possible. It found itself in the thick
of the process of decolonization which in a few short decades swept
away centuries-old colonial empires. The UN set important standards,
which influenced developments for the majority of people all over
the world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by
the UN in 1948, became one of the major documents of our time. Article
1 gives clear expression to the hope for a better organized and
more peaceful world: “All human beings are born free and equal
in dignity and human rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience
and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to give these successes
the credit they deserve. Since 1945, at least 13 of the Peace Prizes
have had links to the UN. Some have gone to UN organizations such
as the High Commissioner for Refugees, winner of two awards, UNICEF,
the ILO, or the UN's peace-keeping forces. Others have gone to individuals
like Cordell Hull, reputed to have provided the inspiration underlying
the UN, John Boyd Orr, the first head of the FAO, Ralph Bunche,
first of many UN mediators in the Middle East and, in 1950, the
first non-white Peace Prize Laureate, Dag Hammarskjöld, the
UN's second Secretary-General, or René Cassin, main author
of the Declaration of Human Rights.
In its most important area, however, preventing war and ensuring
peace, the UN did not turn out to be all that its supporters had
hoped for. In many serious conflicts, the organization remained
on the sidelines or was used as a tool by one of the parties. The
five Great Powers had all agreed that they had to have a veto. But
it is not the veto itself, of course, that explains the UN's inability
to act, but rather the fact that the interests of the two super-powers
diverged so radically throughout the many years of cold war.
Seeing that the main theme in the history of the Peace Prize has
been the wish for a better organized and more peaceful world, it
is surprising that the UN as such has not been awarded the Peace
Prize before. One reason may be disappointment that the UN did not
quite live up to all the expectations of 1945. Another may be the
many UN-related prizes, which made it less necessary to give the
award to the organization itself. A good deal can be attributed
to chance: the UN could have won the award so often that in the
end it never did. Until a suitably important occasion arrived. In
connection with this year's centenary, the Committee once again
felt a need to emphasise the continuous theme of the history of
the Peace Prize, the hope for a better organized and more peaceful
world. Nothing symbolises that hope, or represents that reality,
better than the United Nations.
The end of the cold war meant that the UN became able to play more
of the role in security policy for which it was originally intended.
The Great Powers still had diverging interests; so, too, of course,
had the smaller states, but they had less impact on the international
climate. Although the USA provides the clearest illustration, all
countries are more or less selective in their attitudes to the UN.
They favour an active UN when they need and see opportunities to
obtain its support; but when the UN takes a different stance, they
seek to limit its influence. Since the cold war, however, greater
and smaller powers have to a significant extent been able to unite
in meeting the most serious common challenges: to prevent wars and
conflicts; to stimulate economic development, especially in poor
countries; to strengthen fundamental human rights; to promote a
better environment; to fight epidemics; and, in the most recent
common endeavour, to prevent international terrorism.
No one has done more than Kofi Annan to revitalise the UN. After
taking office as the UN's seventh Secretary-General in January,
1997, he managed in a very short time to give the UN an external
prestige and an internal morale the likes of which the organization
had hardly seen in its over fifty-year history, with the possible
exception of its very first optimistic years. His position within
the organization has no doubt benefited from his having devoted
almost all his working life to the UN. Experience in a bureaucracy
is not always the best springboard for action and fresh approaches
to the outside world, but Annan has brought about both. The UN structure
has been tightened up and made more efficient. The Secretary-General
has figured prominently in the efforts to resolve a whole series
of international disputes: the repercussions of the Gulf War, the
wars in the former Yugoslavia and especially in Kosovo, the status
of East Timor, the war in the Congo, and the implementation of the
UN resolutions concerning the Middle East and “land for peace”.
On the basis of renewed emphasis on the Declaration of Human Rights,
Annan has given the Secretary-General a more active part to play
as a protector of those rights. Time and again, he has maintained
that sovereignty is not a shield behind which member countries can
hide their violations. He has shown the same activist approach to
the struggle against HIV/AIDS, a struggle which he has called his
“personal priority”. Since the terrorist attack on New
York and Washington on the 11th of September, he has urged that
the UN must be given a leading part to play in the fight against
international terrorism. The Secretary-General's report on the role
of the UN in the 21st century formed the basis for the UN's Millennium
Declaration. Here, too, the agenda is ambitious: to put an end to
poverty, to provide better education for the world's billions of
people, to reduce HIV/AIDS, to protect the environment, and to prevent
war and armed conflict.
The only one of the UN's previous six Secretaries-General who can
be compared to Annan in personal force and historical importance
is Dag Hammarskjöld, the organization's second Secretary-General
and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961. For Kofi Annan,
Dag Hammarskjöld has been a model. In his Hammarskjöld
Memorial Lecture in September this year, Annan said, There can be
no better rule of thumb for a Secretary-General, as he approaches
each new challenge or crisis, than to ask himself, 'how would Hammarskjöld
have handled this?'”. Annan is nevertheless more of a team
player than Hammarskjöld was. In other respects, too, Annan
goes further than Hammarskjöld could: “I suspect he would
envy me the discretion I enjoy in deciding what to say, and what
topics to comment on”. This can occasionally be a bit much,
however, even for Annan: “I find myself called on to make official
statements on almost everything that happens in the world today,
from royal marriages to the possibility of human cloning!”.
Wars between states have grown quite rare in recent decades. This
can be regarded as a victory for norms which the UN has stood for
throughout its existence. But many wars are still fought in our
time. The new development is that wars within states, civil wars,
have become relatively more frequent. This is confronting the UN
with major challenges. The UN has traditionally been a defender
of the sovereignty of individual states. The principle of state
sovereignty is laid down in the UN Charter, especially in Article
2.7. but even that Article contains a qualification: “this
principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures
under Chapter VII” (the chapter on action to preserve peace).
Now that we are attaching ever-increasing importance to “human
security” and not just to the security of states, it makes
little difference whether a life is lost in an international or
a civil war.
If the UN is to prevent civil war, the question soon arises of intervention
from outside. Many see intervention as equivalent to invasion. Small
states are naturally afraid that big states will use it as a pretext
for interfering in their domestic affairs. The policies of colonial
powers in Africa and Asia, the Soviet Union's entries into Eastern
Europe, and the USA's various interventions in the Western hemisphere
all illustrate the need to protect the sovereignty of small states.
On the other hand, the present situation, with civil wars in numerous
countries, is a high price to pay for regarding state sovereignty
as absolute. The massacres in Rwanda taught us all, and not least
Annan, that the world does not necessarily get any better if one
refrains from intervening. As Annan himself has said, we applaud
the policeman who “intervenes” to stop a fight, or the
teacher who tries to prevent bullying and fighting; and a doctor
“intervenes” to save patients' lives. “A doctor who
never intervenes has few admirers and probably even fewer patients.”
Where humanitarian concerns are uppermost, Doctors without Borders
(MSF) in particular, the 1999 Laureate, has argued that the global
community has “a duty to intervene”, a principle which
the UN General Assembly has accepted in several important resolutions.
The debate on “humanitarian intervention” raises difficult
questions to which there are no pat answers, especially when the
debate shifts from purely humanitarian to more political ground.
Under Annan's leadership, the UN has shown itself willing to participate
in this difficult discussion, with significant results in the last
few years. Developments have taken a favourable turn in Kosovo,
though there is still a long way to go. The UN played a leading
part in the process which in a short space of time advanced East
Timor from the status of a colony to, before long, that of an independent
state. Maybe the 1996 Peace Prize awarded to Belo and Ramos-Horta
also contributed. Today large and small states alike are almost
competing in urging the UN to take the lead in developing Afghanistan
away from a Taliban regime that has been a leading supporter of
international terrorism, and towards a broadly-based government
that can lead the country back into the international community.
So we have already moved well into the discussion of what steps
to take to achieve a better organized and more peaceful world in
the next hundred years. It has been repeated again and again that
the UN can not become anything more than the world's ever so multifarious
governments wish to make it. But in the light of the many common
tasks that lie ahead, we must at least see to it that the very slowest
movers among the nations are not allowed to set too much of the
future pace. As globalisation expands, the question will be asked
even more loudly than at present of who is to manage this development
and by what means. In the view of the Nobel Committee, that will
be a task for the UN, if not in the form of a centralised world
government then at least as the more efficient global instrument
which the world so sorely needs.
For that to come about, it will help if nations as far as possible
have a shared platform. Democracy is stronger today than at any
time in history; over half of the world's population lives under
democratic government. This marks a great victory for the principles
in the Human Rights Declaration. One need go no further than back
to the inter-war years, when democracy was a threatened species
of government, to realise how dramatic this progress has been. Democracies
rarely if ever go to war with each other.
The strong position of democracy today gives grounds for optimism.
But much remains to be done, not least in the economic field. We
have made very few advances in solidarity between countries that
are growing ever richer, and the many countries and individuals
who either are not benefiting to the same extent from globalisation
or are even suffering from its economic and social consequences.
The number of poor people in the world is ever-increasing.
There were many reverses in the twentieth century, for the world
as a whole and for the idea of a better organized and more peaceful
world. Two world wars, and a cold war that lasted more than forty
years and spread into every corner of the world, set a limit to
how optimistic we can feel about the future. On the other hand,
we have witnessed a remarkable development, from the scattered and
rather private peace initiatives at the previous turn of the century
to the ever stronger and more efficient United Nations we have today.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes both to honour the work that
the UN and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan have already done, and
to encourage them to go ahead along the road to a still more forceful
and dynamic United Nations.
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