Barack Obama – Nobel Peace Prize

Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, when he had not even been President Of The United States for twelve months. He was nominated for the award when he had only been in office for a matter of weeks and he was declared the winner on 9th October. He accepted the prize in Oslo on 10th December. He was the fourth American President to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, and the third to still have been in office when it was received. He donated the whole of the prize money to charity, and this amounted to approximately $1.4 million.

The reasons that he was chosen to receive the prize were mainly based around the work he had begun on reaching out to groups that may have been previously overlooked by the US in their international relations, particularly Muslim groups. The Nobel Committee felt that this was stating to bring about a different climate in the way that these relations were received. They also referred to his work on trying to reduce climate change and the prevention of nuclear materials being used to forge weapons. They described his efforts to bring harmony to the international community as extraordinary.

The announcement that President Obama was to receive the award was met with a great deal of surprise, both in the United States and overseas. Much of this surprise came down to the fact that President Obama had not been in office long enough to have really made much of an impact on the things that he wanted to address. The Committee were forced to respond by saying that they had in fact given him the award for things that he had already achieved before he became President and it was not given on the basis of things that he may achieve in the future.