How is a Nobel Peace Prize winner chosen?

BarcelonaThis year's prize has been marked above all by the campaign for a supposed candidacy of the US president. It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that one of the reasons Donald Trump pushed for a ceasefire in Gaza this week was the proximity of the Nobel announcement. the agreement has been reached in extremis: just the day before the Norwegian Nobel Committee make the winner public. But in the end he didn't win the award, which went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. A choice that could also satisfy Trump, as it rewards one of his allies against Nicolás Maduro's regime.

In fact, Trump had few options this year. Nominations for the 2025 award closed at the end of January, just as Trump landed in the White House. There were 338 nominations, which will remain completely secret for 50 years, as is customary. The Israeli prime minister announced that he would nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize during their first meeting at the White House on July 8, but the nominations were closed. This does not mean that Donald Trump's name was among the 338 nominations that were registered. In other years, there had also been rumors that he had been nominated for the prize, but it has never been officially confirmed, nor do we know if it is true that Elon Musk is also nominated, for example.

"Trump's nomination will be more of a discussion for next year than for this one," says Jordi Armadans, a political scientist and analyst specializing in conflict and peace. But even then, or in the remaining three years of his term, a Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump is "highly unlikely," believes Armadans, who is well acquainted with the nature of these awards. "The spirit of the award is completely contrary to that of Trump," he points out, highlighting above all "one of the themes that has been repeated by all the winners of the last 15 years," which is that they have been "leaders or institutions that support multilateralism, the United Nations system, the defense of the rule of law, and international law."

Kristian Herbolzheimer, director of the Catalan International Institute for Peace (ICIP), also believes that "there is no way" Trump can win the Nobel Prize, "basically because the prize bases its work on strengthening international institutions dedicated to conflict prevention and management." "Trump is a person who works by imposing the law of the mightiest, and that goes completely against everything the prize stands for," he adds.

It would be very difficult to justify a Nobel Prize for a president who has withdrawn his country from UNICEF, the WHO, and the Paris Agreement, who has cut 60% of the funding received for global humanitarian aid, who has imposed sanctions on his country's judges at the International Criminal Court, and who has directly attacked DNA. Furthermore, a Nobel Peace Prize would be incomprehensible for a president who, in just a few months in office, has bombed Iran; threatened to annex territories of other countries, such as Greenland; deployed the army on the streets of his own country; initiated a violent persecution of illegal immigrants; and who changed the name of his Department of Defense to the "War Department."

Trump's pressure and the threat of tariffs

On other occasions, individuals have been awarded prizes for specific actions without considering the overall figure, as was the case with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who received the 1973 Nobel Prize—along with Vietnamese Le Duc Tho—for the peace agreement in Vietnam, and without taking into account his involvement in many other chapters. That prize, in fact, led to the resignation of two members of the Norwegian committee who disagreed with his choice. This had happened only once in the past, and it happened again in 1994, when a committee member resigned in disagreement over the prize awarded to Palestinian Yasser Arafat (shared with Israelis Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres).

But another argument against Trump is his own self-campaign. "If there's one thing the Nobel Peace Committee values, it's discretion, and on other occasions where there have been public campaigns in favor of a specific person, they haven't been happy about it," says Armadans. "The fact that the candidate himself is campaigning publicly has never been seen before," he adds. Trump even said a few days ago that if he isn't awarded the Nobel Prize, "it will be an insult" in the United States, and he insisted on arguing that in his first months in office he has already ended "seven wars," a statement that is not true. "If Barack Obama called me, I would get it in minutes," he said, not hiding how his request is influenced by the fact that his hated predecessor did receive the Nobel Prize in 2009. That award was also criticized for being considered premature, "but Obama also had a speech about strengthening international institutions."

Norwegian media have reported that Trump even called former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who is currently Finance Minister and formerly served as Prime Minister of Norway, to lobby for his candidacy. One of the members of the Norwegian committee was Secretary of State in Stoltenberg's government.

Who chooses the Nobel Peace Prize?

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Peace Prize is chosen by a Norwegian committee made up of five people chosen by the Norwegian Parliament, as Alfred Nobel wrote. This year, for the first time, the committee has allowed cameras from the BBC and Norwegian public television to enter and record one of their discussion sessions, which have always been completely secret, with not even their schedule being made public.

Since last year, the head of the committee has been Jørgen Watne Frydnes, a 41-year-old Norwegian human rights activist who has been part of the group since 2021. The deputy head of the committee is Asle Toje, a Norwegian academic who is an expert in foreign policy and studied at Cambridge. 8 committee have a much more political profile: one of them is Gry Larsen, who until 2013 was Foreign Secretary in the government led by Stoltenberg; Another is Anne Enger of the Centre Party, who was Minister of Culture and Deputy Prime Minister in the 1990s; and finally, Kristin Clemet of the Conservative Party, who also served as a minister in various governments in the 1990s and early 2000s.

However, "there is a lot of Norwegian belief in Norway," explains Armadans. This year's Nobel Prize is looming over the threat of possible retaliation from Trump if he is not awarded the coveted prize, which could even take the form of tariffs on Norway. But both Armadans and Herbolzheimer believe that the Norwegian committee is more than accustomed to diplomatic pressure and will not be swayed by it. In fact, it would not be the first time that the country has suffered retaliation for a Nobel Peace Prize: China imposed sanctions and froze diplomatic relations with Oslo for six years after the prize was awarded to opposition figure Liu Xiaobo in 2010. "Every year we receive thousands of letters, emails, and requests, so having this campaign, the pressure... it's really nothing new." But at the same time, he admitted that this year there is a special expectation. "We believe the world is listening, and that the world is discussing, and discussing how we can achieve peace is a good thing. And we must remain strong and principled in our decisions... that's our job."