Disquiet over the Nobel Peace Prize

In her coverage of the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo, Navina Sundaram makes no secret of her criticism of the decision to confer the prize on US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ, Politburo member of the North Vietnamese Communist Party. She is not alone in her criticism: there are protests worldwide, the New York Times speaks of a ‘war prize’, and in Norway, left-wing groups protest against the failure of the negotiated ceasefire in Vietnam. The report concludes with the alternative peace prize awarded to the Brazilian Archbishop Camara. Amidst the din of the Cold War, it is crucial to draw attention to the ‘silent war’, the growing inequality between the North and the South.