The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, Friday, October 6, in Oslo (Norway), to Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, currently imprisoned “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight for the promotion of human rights and liberty for all.” His profile is representative of the diversity of Nobel Peace Prize winners in recent years.
She is the second Iranian woman to receive the prestigious distinction, after the activist Shirin Ebadi, in 2003. The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the Academy’s most cosmopolitan awards, since it has been awarded to personalities of forty-five different nationalities.
The United States (twenty-one awards), the United Kingdom (eleven) and France (nine) received the most awards, particularly at the beginning of the 20th century, when there were only twelve for the entire African continent.
According to Alfred Nobel’s wishes, the prize rewards “a personality or a community”. Organizations have been awarded thirty times, including ten times in the last twenty years. Two of them have even won several awards: the International Committee of the Red Cross, three times (in 1917, 1944 and 1963) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, twice (in 1954 and 1981 ). The United Nations and several of its agencies (UNICEF, Peacekeeping Force, IPCC, etc.) were distinguished.
Narges Mohammadi is the 19th woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Very few women have been honored throughout the 20th century, but nine have received this award since 2003, when Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi was recognized for her fight for human rights. This doesn’t seem like much, but it’s also a higher diversity than among the scientific Nobel Prize winners.
The Nobel committee can also choose not to award prizes: this was the case on nineteen occasions, in particular during the two world wars, but also in the 1930s or 1960s.
The foundation’s statutes provide, in fact, that if none of the profiles submitted for consideration seem important enough to be awarded an award, the endowment will be retained for the following year’s prize. The last case dates back to 1972.
The 2023 prize only recognizes one person, but it often happens that the award is given jointly to two winners with different profiles, but sharing the same fight. This configuration is quite common, since it has occurred thirty times in the history of the Nobels. This was the case, for example, in 2014 with Malala Yousafzaï and Kailash Satyarthi, a Pakistani and an Indian who worked for children’s right to education. On the other hand, the prize is less frequently awarded to a trio. This was the case in 1994 (Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin) and in 2011 (Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman), while in 2022 it rewarded one person (Ales Bialiatski) and two organizations ( Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties).
At 51, Narges Mohammadi is a little younger than the average Nobel Peace Prize winner. The two youngest winners are also women: Malala Yousafzaï was 17, and Nadia Murad, 25.
According to the Nobel committee, Narges Mohammadi was arrested thirteen times and sentenced five times to a total of thirty-one years in prison and 154 lashes. Incarcerated again in 2021, she has not seen her children – who live in France with her husband – for eight years.
This is the fifth time that the prize has been awarded to imprisoned activists, following German journalist Carl von Ossietzky, an opponent of the Nazi regime, in 1935; Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi, in 1991; Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010, and Belarusian Ales Beliatski in 2022.
Only the Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho refused the distinction in 1973. He had negotiated the Paris peace accords for North Vietnam against the American Henry Kissinger.
The Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded to individuals or communities who have worked “to bring people together, to eliminate or reduce standing armies, and to bring together and spread progress for peace.” It can be a commitment to human rights, disarmament actions, an ecological fight… The action rewarded in 2023, the fight for human rights, and specifically against the oppression of women, is the most represented since the creation of the prize.