The
most awaited Nobel Prize (the Peace Nobel 2012) has been announced and though
the decision is not surprising given the leanings of the Norwegian Nobel
Committee, it is certainly a debatable one in the present geopolitical and economic
context.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
European
Union has had a history of creating peace among the warring nations and it should
have got its due much earlier. The timing now is wrong for obvious reasons.
Peace
Nobel is a politically sensitive decision and helps mobilize the global opinion
on the most vital humanitarian issues of the day and there are more pressing
concerns at the moment than revisiting the glorious history of the European Union.
EU
was the favourite contender of the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern
Jagland even last year but the global geopolitical situations led the committee
chose names who reflected the fighting spirit on multiple fronts – taking on
the dictators and working for the women’s rights to bring the holistic change
in the society in the most oppressive, gender insensitive and war-torn of the
regimes – Yemen and Liberia.
That
addressed some of the most significant developments of the year declared as ‘the
year of the protester’ by the TIME magazine. The three women winners (Liberian President
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and human rights activist Leymah Gbowee and Yemeni human
rights campaigner Tawakkul Karman) of 2011 represent the change of multiple
facets in their respective countries.
Now
this year again, at a time, when there were over 30 armed conflicts still
raging and when massacres were still happening, all eyes were on the names
associated with protesting and leading protests against such fights. So there
were Russian activists and organizations trying to create an anti-Putin fight
against an increasingly dictatorial Vladimir Putin. The Arab Spring was almost
non-violent and so are the Russian protests. American non-violent theorist Gene
Sharp was the top-pick of many for affecting protests from the Tiananmen in
1989 to the Arab Spring in 2011.
The
conditions that existed for the EU last year are more or less still the same. The
Eurozone crisis has been a worrying spot for quite some time now. And much of
it is its internal doing – the ‘class war’ of the European economies within.
Now
it is a matter to be debated what drew Jagland and his team to put the final approval
on EU’s name – whether it was to honour a dying world body with a significant history
and an era-defining role or a desperate cry to recognize the past to save the
future, or whether it was worthwhile not to give a global voice to the Russian
protesters by recognizing them.
Most
of the Peace Nobel decisions have chosen winners based on their achievements
hoping they’ll push for further positive change.
But
at the moment, the Eurozone crisis is threatening the global economy creating
ripples of recession. Many European countries are staring at bankruptcy. The
continent of peace as defined by Jagland is turning into a continent of
economic devastation that may send the whole world into yet another global economic
depression. That would certainly be worse than any war of the recent history,
for it would affect the livelihoods of the billions across the continent. And
remember, it is mostly a war within the Europe.
So
it is quite natural that the Nobel committee’s decision this year has not been acceptable
to the majority like it was in 2011 and 2010. Already facing the backlash, it
reminds of the controversy that the Barack Obama decision of 2009 had generated.
