How have the Nobel Peace Prize nomination criteria changed since Alfred Nobel’s will?

1. Origins: Nobel’s terse instructions and deliberate ambiguity

Alfred Nobel’s will established a Peace Prize alongside four scientific and literary awards and gave a succinct substantive test—those “who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” in specified peace-related terms—without spelling out a nomination or selection apparatus, leaving practical questions to future institutions ^{[5] [1]}.

2. From vagueness to institutional design: Norway and the committee

Nobel’s will specified that a five‑member committee appointed by the Norwegian Storting should award the Peace Prize, thereby embedding national political control over appointments; since then the Norwegian Nobel Committee has become the definitive selector and gatekeeper, developing practices for soliciting and receiving nominations each year ^{[1] [6]}.

3. Formalizing who can nominate: clear categories and wider outreach

Whereas Nobel left nomination procedures unspecified, contemporary statutes and Nobel institutions now define eligible nominators—university rectors and professors in relevant fields, members of national assemblies and governments, past laureates, board members of past laureate organizations, judges of international courts, and others—and the committee routinely sends nomination forms to thousands of qualified nominators to ensure global participation ^{[3] [7] [5]}.

4. Procedural rules added over time: secrecy, deadlines and posthumous policy

Modern rules include a strict confidentiality period—nominations and deliberations are sealed for 50 years—an annual calendar and deadlines (with an eight‑month screening process before announcement), and a change in the 1970s on posthumous awards (the statutes now allow awards to be made if the laureate dies after announcement, whereas earlier rules and practice were more restrictive) ^{[1] [6] [4]}.

5. Substantive evolution: expanding “peace” to human rights and broader causes

Practices of the Nobel Committee have broadened the notion of what constitutes work for peace; from early prizes favoring organized peace movements, by the mid‑20th century and especially after 1960 the Committee increasingly embraced human‑rights activism and other non‑traditional peace efforts—an interpretive expansion that Nobel did not specify but that the Committee has defended as consistent with the spirit of lasting peace ^[2].

6. Politics, transparency and institutional pressures: implicit agendas and contested choices

Because committee members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament and because decisions are final and without appeal, the prize has become intertwined with contemporary political judgments and occasional controversy—choices like those around Arafat, Obama and other laureates have sparked resignations and public debate—illustrating that the criteria’s application is as much political and discretionary as it is legalistic ^{[5] [8]}.

7. Continuities, limits of evidence and what stayed the same

Despite procedural formalization and interpretive broadening, the core directive from Nobel’s will—rewarding contributions to fraternity among nations and reduction of armed forces—remains the canonical touchstone read aloud at the start of Committee deliberations, and the Committee emphasizes that nominations must come from eligible nominators rather than self‑applications; available sources do not provide a comprehensive, year‑by‑year codification of every historical tweak, so this account relies on institutional descriptions and highlighted reforms such as secrecy rules and posthumous policy changes ^{[9] [3] [4]}.