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The Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s chairman has been removed from his post for the first time in the award’s 114-year history. He’s been criticized over a number of the panel’s controversial picks, like US president and the EU.
Ousted Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian Labor prime minister, had been in charge of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for six years before he was voted out on Tuesday. He will remain a member of the committee, but the leading role has been passed on to the panel's deputy chairman, Kaci Kullmann Five, a former conservative party leader.
“There’s a new committee with new people, and new people can always lead to new considerations,” Kullmann Five told journalists. “Jagland has been a good leader for the committee for six years.”
Three out of six prize winners chosen under Thorbjoern Jagland have raised controversy.
Jagland’s first year as chairman in 2009 saw the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to US President Barack Obama, who at that time had only been in office for nine months.
Obama won the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," while the US was engaged in two lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as heightened US drone strikes on suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen.
A Norwegian diplomat revealed in 2014, that the Obama administration itself was not happy with being given the award.
"My colleague in Washington received a reprimand from Obama's chief of staff [Rahm Emanuel, at the time]. The word 'fawning' was used," Morten Wetland, who was Norway’s United Nations delegate from 2008 to 2012, wrote in an article published in the Norwegian daily Dagens Naeringsliv and cited by AFP.
http://rt.com/news/237465-nobel-peace-chairman-deposed/
Ousted Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian Labor prime minister, had been in charge of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for six years before he was voted out on Tuesday. He will remain a member of the committee, but the leading role has been passed on to the panel's deputy chairman, Kaci Kullmann Five, a former conservative party leader.
“There’s a new committee with new people, and new people can always lead to new considerations,” Kullmann Five told journalists. “Jagland has been a good leader for the committee for six years.”
Three out of six prize winners chosen under Thorbjoern Jagland have raised controversy.
Jagland’s first year as chairman in 2009 saw the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to US President Barack Obama, who at that time had only been in office for nine months.
Obama won the prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," while the US was engaged in two lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as heightened US drone strikes on suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen.
A Norwegian diplomat revealed in 2014, that the Obama administration itself was not happy with being given the award.
"My colleague in Washington received a reprimand from Obama's chief of staff [Rahm Emanuel, at the time]. The word 'fawning' was used," Morten Wetland, who was Norway’s United Nations delegate from 2008 to 2012, wrote in an article published in the Norwegian daily Dagens Naeringsliv and cited by AFP.
http://rt.com/news/237465-nobel-peace-chairman-deposed/