There have been buzzing speculations from numerous sources such as CNN, BBC, and the Huffington Post that the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize would be awarded to either one of these favorable candidates: Malala Yousafzai or Dr. Denis Mukwege. Malala Yousafzai is a 16-year-old Pakistani girl who protested against banning girls’education in the Swat Valley and was almost murdered by a Taliban gunman for submitting anonymous reports on BBC. Dr. Denis Mukwege is a 58-year-old Congolese doctor who has dedicated his life (and had been doing so for the last two decades) to help war rape victims with permanent internal and psychological damage in the Panzi Hospital.

Contrary to popular belief, as announced on October 11th, 2013, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was no organization other than the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Many people’s, along with my own, first reaction was “The what?”The organization might have been created in 1997 but the group never came into full recognition, ever. The Nobel Prize Foundation justifies its selection by highlighting that “disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel’s will” and that “the conventions and work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law”. And here I was, thinking that basic common sense, not an organization, would help declare chemical weapons as inhumane. NPR also issued an article proclaiming that Syrian citizens were deeply unhappy with the choice, since it had only been two weeks since the OPCW had attempted to dismantle the chemical weapons and the job was nowhere close to being finished. This loosely-UN-affiliated organization was awarded one of the biggest honors in the world for attempting to fulfill its sole created purpose. It is tantamount to awarding an author for a book he hasn’t written yet and for attempting to fulfill his basic, job-description-ed duties as an author. I am in no way disregarding the obscure group and its efforts to eliminate chemical compounds that have claimedthousands of souls in Syria; however, I find it quite a bit perplexing to award an organization that has neither shed further light upon the matter nor has successfully disarmed the government and rebels alike of chemical weapons.


Haemin Lee
Los Osos High School
12th Grade