What to know about the Nobel Peace Prize Trump covets

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump has for years made it clear that he wants to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Since returning to office in January, he’s stepped up his campaign with aggressive lobbying both in public and behind closed doors.

“Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” he told the United Nations General Assembly in September. That same month, he said that not giving him the accolade would be a “big insult” to America.

The independent Norwegian committee that chooses the recipient has resisted such pressure in the past, even though its decisions have had fallout for Norway. The country’s diplomatic and economic ties with China were strained for six years after jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo was awarded the prize in 2010.

If Mr Trump is overlooked when the committee unveils its choice on Oct 10, there is a risk this could prompt retaliation from the US, potentially in the form of higher tariffs on Norway’s goods or restrictions on its US$2 trillion (S$2.58 trillion) sovereign wealth fund.

Some 338 candidates have been put forward for the 2025 peace prize.

While there is plenty of scepticism about whether Mr Trump’s efforts merit the prestigious award as at Oct 7, he was the second favourite among the bookmakers, according to Oddschecker.

He is sandwiched between the bookies’ front-runner, Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, a volunteer aid network operating in the war-torn nation, and Ms Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

These odds can be an unreliable indicator, however, as the process of selecting who receives the Nobel Peace Prize is shrouded in secrecy.

What is the Nobel Peace Prize?

It is one of five Nobel Prizes established under the will of Dr Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite who died in 1896. The four others celebrate achievements in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature. The prize for economic sciences was set up later, in 1968, by Sweden’s central bank in memory of Nobel.

Dr Nobel’s will stipulated that the peace prize reward the person who has “done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses”.

The first Nobel Peace Prize was handed out in 1901 and was shared between Mr Henry Dunant, co-founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross, for his humanitarian efforts to help wounded soldiers, and French politician Frederic Passy for his lifelong work in the international peace movement.

The prize can be shared by up to three individuals and can also be bestowed on an organisation. Entities can receive the award multiple times.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, for example, is a three-time recipient, picking up the prize in 1917, 1944 and 1963. A rule change in 1974 means someone cannot be given the award posthumously unless they die after the final selection is announced and before the prize is actually presented.

As at the end of 2024, the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded 105 times. There were 19 years in which an award was not made, largely during the First and Second World Wars. The committee that adjudicates the process can choose not to hand out a prize if it deems the nominees don’t meet the criteria.

Who awards the Nobel Peace Prize?

Dr Nobel’s will instructed that the peace prize be decided by a five-person committee selected by the Norwegian Parliament, while the other prizes should be awarded by Swedish institutions.

It is unclear why Nobel opted for Norway to be the arbiter of the peace prize, although during his lifetime, Norway and Sweden were part of a union under one monarch, until Norway became an independent kingdom in 1905.

Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are elected for six-year terms and can be re-elected. To counter the perception that Norway’s politicians influence the decision-making over who is awarded the prize, sitting members of Parliament have been excluded from joining the panel since 1977.

The committee members are nominated by the biggest political parties in Norway to reflect the balance of power in the legislature, and have to be approved by a parliamentary majority. The tenures of at least two members are set to end in 2026, meaning the make-up of the committee could change. One of those seats could shift to the populist Progress Party, which won around 24 per cent of the vote in Norway’s September general election.

How does the committee decide who to award the Nobel Peace Prize to?

Candidates can only be nominated by people who meet certain criteria; they cannot nominate themselves. There is no limit on how many years they can be nominated. Those eligible to submit nominations include members of national assemblies or organisations such as the International Court of Justice, university professors and previous recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

After the deadline for nominations has passed, the Norwegian Nobel Committee trims the number of candidates to a longlist, asking experts officially affiliated with the Nobel Institute to help scrutinise the validity of the applications. 

As the committee gets closer to a shortlist, or if it needs more specific knowledge or facts about nominees, it reaches out to international researchers and experts. The deliberations of the committee and the input from its advisers are bound by a 50-year confidentiality rule.

The committee has mostly been able to make a unanimous decision on the award. However, when a consensus can’t be achieved, the choice is made via a simple majority vote.

The committee’s judgment is final and cannot be appealed. The prize also cannot be revoked. Recipients can decline the award, however.

Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho did so when he was given the prize in 1973 alongside then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for negotiating a ceasefire during the Vietnam War. Mr Le Duc Tho refused the award on the grounds that the truce broke down and peace had not yet been established.

Who are some notable recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize?

The 142 awardees thus far, known as Nobel Prize laureates, comprise 92 men, 19 women and 28 organisations (two organisations – the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN High Commissioner for Refugees – have been lauded for their efforts in more than one year).

Ms Malala Yousafzai is the youngest person to be awarded a Nobel Prize in any category. At age 17, she was given the peace award in 2014 in recognition of her championing of girls’ education rights. She was a joint recipient alongside anti-child slavery activist Kailash Satyarthi.

Former US President Barack Obama was given the award in 2009 – just months into his first term in office – for his support of a world free from nuclear arms and his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy”.

It was a controversial decision, viewed by some as aspirational rather than a reward for substantive action. Critics also point out that Mr Obama’s presidency went on to be marked by a surge in American troops in Afghanistan and an increase in drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere.

That is not the only award that drew questions in retrospect. Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was given the prize in 2019 after breaking the deadlock in a longstanding border dispute with neighbouring Eritrea.

But 12 months later, he was embroiled in a civil war in the Tigray region of the country that left hundreds of thousands dead, according to the Tigray War Project at the University of Ghent.

What is the case for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Mr Trump has long expressed a desire to be given the peace award and complained that his dealmaking skills have not been fairly judged. “If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds,” he said in 2024.

Mr Trump insists that he has resolved “seven unendable wars” since returning to the White House in January, including an armed conflict between India and Pakistan in May.

But his peacemaking credentials are a matter of debate. Some of the hostilities were small in scale, other conflicts are still ongoing or ended long ago, and Mr Trump’s role and impact as a mediator have been disputed.

One of the nominations for Mr Trump for the 2025 peace prize was submitted by Ms Claudia Tenney, a Republican congresswoman from New York, for the president’s work on the Abraham Accords during his first term in office.

These agreements, signed in 2020, normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states.

While Ms Tenney’s submission indicates Mr Trump made it into the pool of nominees, unless he is unveiled as the recipient of the prize on Oct 10, we will likely have to wait half a century to find out whether he made it onto the committee’s shortlist.

The campaign for Mr Trump to take the award home in 2026 looks to have already started. Several world leaders have said they nominated Mr Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, although their submissions were after the Jan 31 cut-off date for the 2025 cycle.

This includes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet. If Mr Trump’s Gaza peace plan works out or he can broker an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, he would be in a stronger position to receive the award in 2026 on its 125th anniversary.

What are the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize given?

The laureates are presented with an 18-carat gold medal, a diploma, and a check for a large sum of money. This year they’ll be handed 11 million Swedish kronor (S$1.5 million), the same as in 2023 and 2024.

Dr Nobel left the majority of his fortune – then one of the largest in the world – for the establishment of the Nobel Prize. His will stipulated that the more than 31 million kronor, or approximately 2.2 billion kronor in today’s money, be converted into a fund and invested in “safe securities”.

This task is managed by the Nobel Foundation and the interest earned is used to fund the Nobel Prizes.

While the awardees are announced in October, the prize is handed out at Oslo City Hall on Nobel Day, which takes place on Dec 10, the anniversary of Dr Nobel’s death. BLOOMBERG