Honourable intentions but did the Nobel committee make the right choice

Yesterday's announcement on the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize saw three women from Africa and the Middle East who symbolized nonviolent struggles to improve their nations and to advance the role of women's rights win the prize jointly.

There is an interesing leader though in thi morning's Times which asks that whilst the committee’s intentions were both honourable and understandable,this year’s peace prize shows all the signs of an ill-defined fudge.

The winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female president; her countrywoman Leymah Gbowee, a peace activist who challenged warlords; and Tawakkul Karman, a Yemeni human-rights leader seeking to overthrow an autocratic regime as part of the regionwide Arab Spring movement.

All good causes,no one can deny but says the paper

Sadly, the result is a less than honourable fudge. By dividing the award into three, rather than choosing an individual as normal or an organisation, also permitted by the instructions of Alfred Nobel, the committee signalled its failure to make up its mind. It could evidently neither decide between the competing claims of reconciliation in West Africa and human rights in Arabia nor settle on a single figure who had done the most for the peace of the world in the past year. And by artificially unifying the two themes under the common struggle of women across the globe for their rights, the Nobel committee runs the risk of appearing somewhat patronising in awarding the prize to women in general.