The Jakarta Post
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsThe Nobel Peace Prize in a fragmented world
The Nobel Peace Prize is controversial by nature, but this year's awarding is even more controversial.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Navi Pillay, a South African lawyer and champion of international law, waves on Oct. 9, 2026, after she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 in the historic Courtroom 600 at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, southern Germany, where she was attending the Nuremberg Forum 2026 organized by the International Nuremberg Principles Academy. (AFP/Frank Boxler)
O
nly hours after former International Criminal Court (ICC) jurist Navanethem “Navi” Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 on Oct. 9, the United States imposed sanctions on the institution: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration of President Donald Trump would ban transactions with what he called a “rogue court”.
A press release from the Norwegian Nobel Committee stated that this year's awarding was intended as a reminder “that the rule of law, national and international, underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts nonviolently”.
Countries such as Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom and several European countries criticized the US over its sanction announcement.
The Trump administration claims the ICC overstepped its jurisdiction by targeting nonmember countries. In 2024, Washington condemned the tribunal for issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders over Gaza and during Trump’s first term, for probing US troops in Afghanistan.
Not only does the high tension reveal the reality of a deeply fragmented world, it also underscores the increasingly significant role that the Nobel Prize plays in contemporary world affairs. The selection of Pillay adds another significant, and more critical, function that the Nobel Committee attaches to the Nobel Peace Prize, namely as an instrument of global advocacy and an active guardian of moral values.
In selecting Pillay, the committee clearly referred to the reality of today’s fragmented world politics. Amid the tendency toward the return of power politics and unilateralism, this year’s awarding serves as an active support or advocate for the rules-based international order.
Traditionally, the Nobel Peace Prize is associated with a celebration of a completed and tangible diplomatic achievement in peace or conflict resolution.
For example, the award was given to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk in 1993 and Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 for their contributions in the successful negotiation or signing of peace agreements.
The Nobel Prize for the European Union in 2012 is another example of how the prize was used to award and recognize the bloc’s success in advancing “peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.”
However, the Nobel Committee does not only look at completed works, achievements and contributions to peace. It also grants the award with the intention to accelerate a peace process or to prevent a peace process from stalling.
Granting a Nobel Peace Prize to a marginalized movement will overcome state pressure and cover-up and shine a global spotlight on it, as did the awards for the 14th Dalai Lama in 1989, for Timor-Leste’s bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta in 1996 and for John Hume and David Trimble in 1998.
The selection of Bello and Ramos-Horta surprised many, as other prominent figures such as Jimmy Carter and Richard Holbrooke were also considered potential recipients for their contributions to conflict resolution.
The granting of the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 has moved the pendulum from its serving as historical recognition for those who have made significant contributions to peace to acting as a catalyst for peace as well as a more powerful instrument of global advocacy and a vigilant guardian of moral values.
The prize’s three functions, however, are not mutually exclusive. Nor do they reflect a historical transformation of the award. They exist simultaneously or parallelly, with more weight given to a particular function depending on which situation the Nobel Committee believes needs support.
The role of the Nobel Peace Prize as an active support and advocate can also be seen in the granting of the award to Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, to Andrei Sakharov in 1975 and to Liu Xiaobo in 2010.
These laureates were selected to provide moral support and legitimacy for their resistance to authoritarian governments.
Undoubtedly, the function of the Nobel Peace Prize as an instrument of global advocacy has exposed the selection of laureates to controversies or even backlash, especially when it touches on the interests of mighty powers.
The selection of von Ossietzky, Sakharov, Liu and now Pillay has been met with not only condemnation but also political opposition. However, opposition or backlash to the selection of Nobel Peace Prize laureates reflects more the power and legitimacy of the award as a moral guardian of global values rather than its weakness or irrelevance.
By swinging the pendulum from its recognizing and accelerating functions more toward its advocating and legitimizing functions, the Nobel Peace Prize increasingly serves as a barometer of values that none can simply ignore, especially in a world as fragmented as we have today.
---
The writer is an international relations lecturer at Gadjah Mada University and a campaigner with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). This article is republished under a Creative Commons license.
