Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Nomination: What You Need To Know

Less than two months before the US election, President Donald Trump appears to have something to celebrate: a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

A far-right Norwegian politician submitted Trump’s name for the 2021 award, citing the president’s role in the recent peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Christian Tybring-Gjedde told Fox News on Wednesday: “By his merit, I think he has tried to create peace between nations more than most of the nominees for the peace prize.”

He added that he was not a big Trump supporter, he added. “The committee should look at the facts and judge him by the facts, not the way he behaves sometimes.”

Of course, a nomination is not the same as winning, we won’t know the winner for 13 months, so what can we do with this news?

So who can nominate a person?

For one nomination only, the barrier to entry is low: all nominations from heads of state or politicians acting at the national level are accepted.

University professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, former Nobel Prize winners and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are also among those deemed qualified to submit a nomination for the award. Nominations do not require an invitation and as long as they are submitted before February 1 of the qualifying year, they will be accepted.

For the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, the winner of which has yet to be announced, there were 318 candidates. The Norwegian Nobel Committee does not comment publicly on its nominees, which have been kept secret for 50 years.

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Has Trump been nominated before?

Yes.

And for the second time, you have Mr. Tybring-Gjedde to thank. In 2018, the right-wing politician was one of two Norwegian lawmakers to nominate Trump for the same award, later for his efforts to bring reconciliation to North and South Korea.

Trump did not take home the award that year, but Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the conservative Progress Party, insists the US president meets the criteria this time.

Last month, Israel and the United Arab Emirates reached an agreement to normalize relations, and Israel agreed to suspend its controversial plans to annex part of the occupied West Bank, announced by Trump in a surprise statement.

• Israel opens a new tentative chapter with the Gulf Arabs

It is only the third Arab-Israeli peace agreement since Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, and it marks the first official diplomatic relationship between Israel and an Arab Gulf country. The agreement reportedly took Palestinian leaders by surprise.

“This is a well-deserved and hard-earned honor for this president,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday. “Career politicians are just talking about the kind of results this president has achieved on the world stage.”

Critics of President Trump say he is a polarizing figure who exploits divisions rather than trying to unite Americans.

Has a United States President been nominated before?

Trump is one of several US presidents to receive the peace prize nomination, including President William Howard Taft, President Herbert Hoover, and President Franklin Roosevelt.

And if he received the coveted award, Trump would be the fifth president of the United States to win, after Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1920, Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Barack Obama in 2009.

Obama’s nomination, after a few months on the job, was met with criticism in the United States, with some arguing that it had not had an impact worthy of the award.

Among his detractors? Trump, who tweeted in 2013 calling for the termination of the Obama award.

Former Nobel Secretary Geir Lundestad later said he regretted Obama’s election. “Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the award was a mistake,” he told the AP news agency. “In that sense, the committee did not achieve what it expected.”

Obama donated the $ 1.4 million (£ 1.08 million) prize to charities.

Have there been controversial nominations before?

While the most famous recipients of the award include Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa, all of whom won the award, the general criteria for nominations mean that past nominees have included highly unorthodox and controversial selections.

Adolf Hitler was nominated for the peace prize in 1939 by a member of the Swedish Parliament. Reportedly featured in satire, the nomination was withdrawn shortly thereafter. A few years later, Soviet leader Josef Stalin was nominated for the same award, twice, earning accolades in 1945, for his efforts to end World War II, and again in 1948.

Once the nominations are submitted, the recipient is selected by a five-person Nobel Committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. The winner of the 2021 award will not be announced until October next year.