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The
Nobel Peace Prize for 1997
Speech given by The Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
- Francis Sejerstad (Oslo, December 10, 1997)
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Copyright © The Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 1997.
Your Majesties, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
There are those among us who are unswerving in their faith that
things can be done to make our world a better, safer, and more humane
place, and who also, even when the tasks appear overwhelming, have
the courage to tackle them. Such people deserve our admiration,
and our gratitude. We are delighted and honoured to welcome some
of them to the Oslo City Hall today. Our warm welcome to you, the
representatives of the ICBL, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines,
and to you, Jody Williams, the campaign's strongest single driving
force. You have not only dared to tackle your task, but also proved
that the impossible is possible. You have helped to rouse public
opinion all over the world against the use of an arms technology
that strikes quite randomly at the most innocent and most defenceless.
And you have opened up the possibility that this wave of opinion
can be channelled into political action.
We all know that the largest part of the task still lies ahead.
Many nations, among them the largest, have been reluctant, at least
so far, to commit themselves to not using this weapon. There is
still the almost hopelessly huge and resource-consuming task of
destroying the landmines - over one hundred million of them - that
have been deployed. And the effort to build up opportunities for
dignified lives for the many millions of innocent mine victims has
only just begun. But through your self-sacrificing work, you have
won support and created an organization that lead us to believe
that it will be possible to reach the goal: a world completely free
from anti-personnel mines. The course has been set, and the inspiration
given. That is no small achievement, but a first step of very great
and perhaps decisive importance. That step is what we honour you
for today.
The mobilisation and focusing of broad popular involvement which
we have witnessed bears promise that goes beyond the present issue.
It appears to have established a pattern for how to realise political
aims at the global level. The ICBL is an umbrella organization for
over one thousand non-governmental organizations, large and small,
which have taken up the cause. The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes
to honour them all, and to draw attention to the impact which such
broad coordination can achieve.
A second characteristic feature of this process that ought to be
noted is how, in the next instance, the political level was mobilised.
A week ago, in Ottawa, 121 countries signed the total ban on anti-personnel
mines. Through Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, the Government of
Canada took the decisive initiative in that mobilisation when, in
October 1996, it invited all countries to the Ottawa meeting. “Such
a treaty,” Axworthy said in connection with the invitation,
“can be a powerful force that establishes the moral norm -
that the production, use, stockpiling and transfer or anti-personnel
mines is to be banned forever.” The strategy adopted, in other
words, was not to water the treaty down with a lot of exceptions
aimed at inducing the hesitant to join in, but to convey a clear
message. Though this may have frightened some countries off, it
has of course, because of the overwhelming support for the process,
placed the larger nations under considerable political pressure.
The problem of landmines has been on the international agenda for
a long time. It was discussed in 1980, in connection with the Landmine
Protocol to the Conventional Weapons Convention. It was when negotiations
on the revision of that Protocol were being held in 1995-96 that
frustration at the lack of progress made itself felt.
In November 1991, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation in
Washington D.C. and Medico International in Frankfurt agreed to
launch a campaign aimed at banning anti-personnel mines. When the
first International Conference on Landmines was held in London in
May 1993, representatives of 40 voluntary organizations attended.
The following year, in Geneva, 75 organizations were represented.
Today, over one thousand organizations are members of the ICBL.
It was by hooking into this popular involvement that the Ottawa
process came to mark a new political beginning, lifting the cause
out of the backwater it had drifted into.
It is interesting to watch this initiative apparently feeding back
into the United Nations and the whole system of international negotiations,
and giving them new life. Effective political action is dependent
on cooperation at several levels. At the national level, that is
old news, first given memorable expression over 150 years ago by
de Tocqueville in his famous analysis of democracy in America. Representative
political bodies can not carry on politics in a vacuum. They need
in some way or other to be rooted in public opinion. And public
opinion must be formed and directed by the active involvement of
individual members of society in society's manifold organizations
or associations. These are the fundamental institutional elements
of what we have learned to know as - a civil society.
The problem at the international level is that no global civil society
has existed. Perhaps it is not so surprising that the UN has not
always been able to be as effective as we might have wished. But
in the extensive cooperation we have been registering between the
multitude of non-governmental organizations, the many national governments,
and the international political system, first and foremost the UN,
we may be seeing the outline of what may turn into a global civil
society. We have glimpsed similar features in other connections,
but hardly as clearly as in this particular case. In the bold hope
this gives us for further development in the same direction, we
see promising signs of a more peaceful world.
How did landmines come to be the problem that generated this kind
of international concern? Weapons exist that in many ways are more
terrible and pose a greater threat, nuclear weapons in particular.
And is it not the case that by banning certain types of weapon,
one indirectly legitimises the use of others, and thereby also legitimises
war? What sort of peace policy is it just to ban certain types of
weapon?
Certainly we have seen similar types of commitment, directed against
nuclear weapons in particular, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee
has on a number of occasions, most recently in 1995, called attention
to active opposition to the build-up of nuclear arms. There is a
vast difference between nuclear weapons and landmines. The former
are the weapons of the rich, the latter of the poor. Yet they also
have something in common. Both hit victims at a vast remove from
the actual warfare. They strike mainly at civilian populations,
and their effects continue for generations after the end of the
armed conflict. They are weapons which cast the shadow of war also
across peace. War's threat to life and limb is everywhere and never-ending.
To set limits to war's repercussions for civilian populations and
its impact on times of peace has always been an important aim of
genuine work for peace.
At this very time, while nuclear war casts its shadow over us all
- and perhaps for that very reason has remained an unrealised threat
since 1945 - landmines are exploding every single day. Nearly all
those killed or maimed are the poorest and most defenceless among
us, and probably number some 26,000 each year. Yet the most alarming
aspect of the situation may not be that total itself, but the constant
threat to the much larger numbers who live in the danger zones,
who do not know where they can send their children out to play,
or who can only gather fuel or work in the fields at great risk
to their own lives. Such people have been robbed of the opportunity
to use the land to build their own societies.
The ICBL and Jody Williams's work is work for disarmament. The Norwegian
Nobel Committee has frequently honoured disarmament efforts, or
work for the “reduction of standing armies”, to use Nobel's
own words. Disarmament reduces tension and thereby the threat of
war. The work of the ICBL and Jody Williams is, however, primarily
aimed at what I have just mentioned: sheltering civilian populations
from war. It is a humanitarian project. The Norwegian Nobel Committee's
tradition of honouring humanitarian efforts goes right back to the
first Peace Prize, awarded in 1901 to Henri Dunant, the founder
of the Red Cross. Humanitarian work prevents war by seeking to eliminate
the underlying causes of violence and war, the causes in the human
mind. A humanitarian effort aims at “fraternity between nations”,
again to quote Nobel. It is a hand outstretched to the victims,
both those who have been maimed and those in danger. It is a demonstration
of care and compassion that transcends all national boundaries.
It is a paradox that what we find inside landmines is Nobel's brilliant
invention, dynamite. Nobel was a profoundly moral man, and was deeply
concerned about the potential of dynamite in weapons technology.
At one time he developed a doctrine of deterrence. He wrote to his
close friend, the peace activist Bertha von Suttner, that perhaps
his factories were more effective in preventing war than her peace
congresses. He can not have been completely convinced, however.
When he decided to establish a peace prize, the idea probably came
from Bertha von Suttner, and it was not a fear-ridden peace he wished
to honour, but a peace of reconciliation and brotherhood. The inspiration
from Bertha von Suttner is reflected in the special mention given
in his will to the organization of peace congresses as a criterion
for the award. Bertha von Suttner was to become the first woman
Laureate when she was awarded the Peace Prize herself in 1905, after
Nobel's death. There have not been many women among the Laureates,
and no doubt there should have been more. But let us at least take
credit for having made an early start. With her self-sacrificing,
untiring and fruitful service to humanity and peace, Jody Williams
is a worthy successor to Bertha von Suttner, who inspired the Peace
Prize and brought Nobel to the realisation that peace must be rooted
in the human mind.
An important step has been taken. The vast problem of landmines
has effectively been placed on the international agenda. The worldwide
opinion has been formed that something must be done about the problem.
And the practical work of freeing the world from landmines has begun.
It is in admiration, and in gratitude for their efforts to achieve
that aim that we honour the ICBL and Jody Williams today with the
Nobel Peace Prize for 1997. The vast and laborious task of putting
an end to the production and sale of mines, destroying existing
mines, and helping the victims has, however, only just begun. Let
us therefore also express the hope that the process will win still
greater support, so that the work can be intensified and a world
without anti-personnel mines can become a reality in the foreseeable
future.
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