LONDON - The Nobel Peace Prize, the world’s most recognised award for efforts to bring about global peace, was founded by Alfred Nobel, who gave a chunk of his personal fortune to fund the prizes. The first Nobel Peace Prize was given in 1901.
Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his last will set apart funds for a prize dedicated “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
Here are some facts about the Nobel Peace Prize.
– Since 1901, 89 Nobel Peace Prize awards have been given to 119 laureates - 96 individuals and 20 organisations.
– The Nobel Peace Prize has been given to 12 women. The first woman winner was Bertha Von Stuttner, an Austrian writer and pacifist, in 1905.
– The oldest winner was Joseph Rotblat, a British physicist, who won it aged 87 in 1995.
– The youngest peace prize winner was a woman, Miread Corrigan, who won at the age of 32 in 1976.
– The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has won the Nobel Peace Prize the most number of times - three (1917, 1944, 1963). The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) won it twice (1954, 1981).
– The founder of the ICRC, Henry Dunant, was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.
– The peace prize has been given to one person 60 times. The award was shared by two people 28 times. Only in 1994 was the prize shared by three people (Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzak Rabin).
– Vietnamese politician and general Le Duc is the only person to have declined the Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the prize in 1973 jointly with US secretary of state Henry Kissinger. But he declined to accept citing the situation in Vietnam.
– In 2009, the Nobel Peace Prize committee received 205 nominations.
– The names of the nominees cannot be revealed for 50 years.
– Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 and 1948 for his efforts to end World War II.
– Adolf Hitler was nominated once in 1939 by a Swedish member of parliament. But the nomination was withdrawn by a letter Feb 1, 1939.
– Mahatma Gandhi, one of the strongest symbols of non-violence, was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, shortly before he was assassinated in January 1948. Although Gandhi was not awarded the prize (a posthumous award is not allowed by the statutes), the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to give no award that year saying “there was no suitable living candidate”.
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