Explained: Why the Nobel Peace Prize is the most controversial award ever

The Nobel Peace Prize’s credibility is often questioned as Mahatma Gandhi never won the honour. Many more were patently undeserving.” Let’s take a look at the several controversies that have dogged the Nobel Peace Prize and why some believe that the award has drifted away from peace. Tho, who was the first Asian awarded for the honour, decline his half of the award, saying “peace has not yet been established,” and also said that accepting the prize would be giving into “bourgeois sentimentalities.” The New York Times called the award the ‘Nobel War Prize,’ since Kissinger, as Nixon’s Secretary of State, had authorised bombing raids on Khmer Rouge and the North Vietnamese in Cambodia. Columnist Jay Nordlinger in The Times of Israel calls Arafat “the worst man ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize.” The Nobel ‘mistake’ for Obama Just nine months into his first term in office, United States’ Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” The decision received massive backlash, with many arguing that the prize was premature. “No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama,” Lundestad said in his book, adding, “Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake.