Noble Peace Prize 2022 (Literature and Economics)

Context

Recently the Nobel Prize for 2022 in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Economics and Medicine has been awarded by the committees in Sweden and Norway.

Probable Question

Will it make any difference in spreading peace and protecting human rights on Earth, through the conferment of a Nobel peace prize to certain individuals and organizations? Comment

About The Nobel Peace Prize 2022

• Winners 
  • Human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, 
  • The Russian human rights organization Memorial, 
  • The Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties.
• Basis
  • It is awarded to those who promote the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. 
  • To the individual or organization, who made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses, and the abuse of power. 
  • To those who demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.
• Human Rights Advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus
  • Ales Bialiatski was one of the initiators of the democratic movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s.
  • He founded the organization Viasna (Spring) in 1996, which evolved into a “broad-based human rights organization that documented and protested against the authorities’ use of torture against political prisoners”.
  • He was also one of the three recipients of the Right Livelihood Award by the Swedish Right Livelihood Foundation, sometimes referred to as the “Alternative Nobel”, in 2020.
• Russian Human Rights Organization, Memorial
  • It was established in 1987, “by human rights activists in the former Soviet Union who wanted to ensure that the victims of the communist regime’s oppression would never be forgotten.” 
  • The former 1954 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov was among the organization’s founders. 
  • The organization is the largest human rights organization in Russia. 
  • It helped in gathering information on “the political oppression and human rights violations in Russia”.
• Ukrainian Human Rights organization, Center for Civil Liberties
  • It was founded in Kyiv in 2007 “for the purpose of advancing human rights and democracy in Ukraine”.
  • It is the leading actor in Ukraine, influencing public opinion and public policy formation, supporting the development of civic activism, and actively participating in international networks and solidarity actions to promote human rights.
  • Amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Center has engaged in efforts to identify and document Russian “war crimes” against the Ukrainian civilian population.

About the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

• Winner

 Annie Ernaux, a celebrated French memoirist was awarded “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”.

• Basis
  • Ernaux has chronicled events in her life ranging from growing up as the daughter of grocers to getting an abortion before it was legalised in France. 
  • She has also captured the anxieties and prevailing issues of her generation.
  • Her approach to exploring her own memories, she distrusts her memory at every step, forever questioning and never settling on one truth, all of this sets her apart from most memoirists.
• About Annie Ernaux
  • Ernaux, née Duchesne, was born in Lillebonne Normandy in 1940.
• Famous Works 
  • Happening (2001), the book is based on her illegal abortion in the 1960s. The work has been in the limelight after abortion rights were curtailed in the US.
  • A Girl’s Story (2016), built on her own experiences at a children’s camp, deals with the shaming an 18-year-old girl is subjected to for her sexuality. 
  • Getting Lost (2022), talks of her affair with a Russian diplomat, she was divorced, and he was married.
• Awards and Recognition
  • Her seminal work ‘The Years’, translated by Alison L Strayer, was shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize in 2019. 
  • She has received the French language prize and the Marguerite Yourcenar prize, as well as the Quarto edition by Gallimard in 2011 (Ernaux is the first woman writer to be published in this series in her lifetime). 

Related: Noble prize 2022 Chemistry and Physics

About Nobel Prize 2022 in Economics

• Winners
  • Ben S Bernanke, 
  • Douglas W Diamond, 
  • Philip H Dybvi.
• Basis
  • The three individuals were awarded for their role in research related to how banks function. 
  • These three awardees have laid the foundation of modern banking research clarifying why we have banks, how to make them less vulnerable to crises, and how bank collapses exacerbate financial crises in the early 1980s. 
  • This analysis is of great practical importance in regulating financial markets and dealing with financial crises to ensure that the crisis didn’t develop into new depressions.
• Ben S Bernanke
  • Bernanke was able to put knowledge from research into policy as he was the head of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve when the 2008 crisis hit.
  • He demonstrated how failing banks played a decisive role in the global depression of the 1930s, the worst economic crisis in modern history. 
  • The collapse of the banking system explains why the downturn was not only deep, but also long-lasting. 
  • His research also added the importance of well-functioning bank regulation.
• Douglas W Diamond and Philip H Dybvi
  • Both Diamond and Dybvig together develop theoretical models explaining why banks exist, how their role in society makes them vulnerable to rumors about their impending collapse, and how society can lessen this vulnerability. 
  • These insights form the foundation of modern bank regulation.
  • The model captures the central mechanisms of banking, as well as its weaknesses. 
  • They argue that banks emerge as natural intermediaries that help ease liquidity.

News Source:

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-global/who-are-the-nobel-peace-prize-winners-for-2022-8195649/

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-culture/literature-nobel-annie-ernaux-memoirs-enduring-appeal-8199066/ 

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-culture/nobel-prize-in-literature-2022-annie-ernaux-profile-8193812/

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-economics/understanding-why-research-on-modern-banking-won-economics-nobel-8200648/

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