Najam Discusses Impact of Nobel Peace Prize in “TRT World” Interview

In an appearance on TRT World, Adil Najam, Dean Emeritus and Professor of International Relations and Earth and Environment at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, discusses the global impact of the Nobel Peace Prize on the recipients and on the issue for which it is awarded. 

The 2022 Nobel Prize winners were announced earlier in the year, and the award ceremony was held on December 10, 2022. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organization Memorial, and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties. At the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Stockholm, laureates from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine denounced Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine.

In discussing the ceremony and the ethos of the Nobel Peace Prize, Najam highlighted that the Peace Prize is fundamentally different from all the other Nobel awards because it is given not only for past achievements but even more as a symbol of future aspirations. “In this aspect, the Peace Prize is essentially political,” Najam said. He pointed out that for this reason, many past Peace Prizes have become contested, but stressed that the impact of the Peace Prize is that it gives the recipients and the issues they represent a global stage. “What the Prize gives to the issue is voice and a huge, enduring, and very very global stage on which to raise their concerns,” Najam argued.

Adil Najam is a global public policy expert who served as the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and was the former Vice-Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, Muslim countries, environment and development, and human development. Read more about Najam on his faculty profile.