(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
This year's Peace Prize winners, the Tunisian Quartet for National Dialogue, are not primarily peace workers or peace advocates in the sense of the Nobel, but a broad alliance of civil society that has been crucial in avoiding civil war in Tunisia. This makes this year's Peace Prize interesting on several levels.
After spending the last 25 years in the national and international peace movement, I am rarely impressed by the Nobel Committee's annual Peace Prize awards. Most often, the awards attest to an elitist and pragmatic worldview. We in the peace movement have a more grassroots and idealistic approach. The Committee traditionally focuses on the world's great politics rather than idealistic work against war and militarism. The Nobel Committee therefore does not go out of its way to award its prizes to violent heads of state nor idealistic peace advocates when deemed appropriate. Most often, the well-known politicians are chosen over the peace activists for fear that the price will be perceived as irrelevant in their own political sphere. This is probably the main reason why the Nobel Committee rarely smiles with a peace prize for a washed-up idealist.
This year, the Nobel Committee did not come up with any peace policy inertia in its election, but neither did a clean disc bomb.
The best thing about organizing this year's Peace Prize is the focus on civil society's efforts for peace. The price will hopefully indicate a certain shift in the Nobel Committee's work at this point. This year's award provides a welcome bottom-up perspective on peacemaking. The fact that Tunisia's constitutional process is also a result of initiatives by the country itself – not from the US, China, the EU or other external actors – reinforces this positive again.
A prize for political development. This year's winner is thus an association of a trade union movement, an employers' organization, a human rights organization and the bar association in Tunisia. These civilian forces have undoubtedly helped to prevent the country's political chaos from 2013 from resulting in any regular civil war. In this context, the Nobel Committee emphasizes in particular the Quartet's efforts to "support the work of the Constituent Assembly and anchor the constitutional process in broad strata of the Tunisian people". This is again understood as crucial for the country to end up with peaceful and democratic elections last year. Here, however, it is important to remember that the Quartet is still in a transition process. Tunisians' attitudes towards democracy have become more negative, not more positive, since the Constitution was adopted in January 2014. The extremist counter-forces are strong and violent. Neither peace nor democracy is founded on secure grounds.
The Committee thus links its resolution to the point of the will on "formation and dissemination of peace congresses". This is a creative twist.
Prime Minister and Chief of Staff at the Prime Minister's Office, Vidar Helgesen, who in his previous job as Secretary General of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance had a certain hand in developing Tunisia's constitution, today states that this is "the most democratic constitution the Arab world ever has have seen". However, this does little if the Tunisians themselves do not want democracy. In a survey conducted three months after the Constitution was passed, only 48 percent of respondents said that democracy is their preferred form of government in Tunisia. A similar survey conducted just after Ben Ali's fall, in 2012, showed that 63 percent of Tunisians then preferred democracy as a form of government. The surveys also show that it is preferably the young people who have lost faith in democracy in Tunisia. For commentators like Janne Haaland Matlary, who thinks this is a peace prize for "western democracy and western rule of law" (and thus a good price in her view), these numbers should worry. Fortunately, the Nobel Committee does not appear as Eurocentric in its rationale, although the Committee believes that democratic development coincides with a peaceful development in Tunisia.
Increased violence. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Democratization does not necessarily bring peace. On the contrary, democratization processes that Tunisia is currently undergoing tend to spur war and conflict. The transition can quickly promote political mobilization along ethnic and religious divisions, while liberalizing the media provides new outlets for propaganda and hate rhetoric. What we called in the 90s "Balkanization" came out of such a situation. Tunisia's political development through 2015 also seems to be moving in a more violent direction, despite reaching new milestones for democratic development. Extreme Islamism is on the rise, with terror and abuse as a result. Already at the beginning of this year, Tunisia was the country that recruited the most foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria. Only in the first half of 2015, as many as 2400 young Tunisians joined ISIS in Iraq. A widespread experience of alienation among the country's younger, high unemployment and growing dissatisfaction with the urban elites of the people of the interior must be addressed effectively if Tunisians are to avoid further radicalization and rising social unrest.
Worth winning? Obviously, preventing violent conflict is important peace work. However, as the debate over Alfred Nobel's will in recent years has shown us, it is far from obvious that this point is sufficient to meet what he wanted with his Peace Prize.
Thus, Alfred Nobel's will says that the prize should be awarded to the peace advocate who has worked most or best for the people's fraternity, disarmament and peace congresses in the past year. To this, the Nobel Committee, in its justification for this year's award, responds that "the broad national dialogue established by the Quartet counteracted a violent development in Tunisia and can therefore be compared to the function of the peace congresses referred to by Alfred Nobel in his will".
Creative twist. The Committee thus links its resolution to the point of the will on "formation and dissemination of peace congresses". This is a creative twist. As Fredrik Heffermehl points out in his book Nobel's Will of 2008, Alfred Nobel provided an international perspective on his account of peace conferences in the will. His starting point was the peace congresses of the 1890s, which in essence concerned international cooperation on the use of arbitration, disarmament and war resistance. The Committee extends the Nobel criterion well when it compares the effect of such international work with Tunisia's national process to reach agreement on its own constitution.
Most important in this case, however, is the connection between Alfred Nobel's criteria for its award. There is thus a "and" between the peoples' brotherhood, the disarmament and the peace congresses in the will. Not an "or". That is why the Nobel Peace Defender wanted to be honored with the award, must have achieved something big in all these three fields. Here there is little doubt that this year's prize winner will fall short.
There is also no doubt that non-violent democratic forces in Tunisia today need our support. The attention this year's Peace Prize gives the Quartet is therefore a good one. The Nobel Committee hopes that this year's award will help secure democracy in Tunisia, and will inspire anyone who wants to promote peace and democracy in the Middle East, North Africa and the rest of the world. This hope, I think, is shared by all peacekeepers around the world, regardless of the will debate, political representation in the Nobel Committee, relations with Sweden and everything else.
Harang is general manager of Artists for Peace.
alexanderharang@me.com.
