The Oslo Business for Peace Award Committee works independently of the Foundation when assessing nominated candidates. The decision of the committee members is final. After selecting the Business for Peace Honourees, the committee also selects a primus inter pares among them, who will act as the spokesperson for that year’s Honourees.
The members of the A
ward Committee are Nobel prize winners in Peace or Economics. The task of inviting a new member to the Award committee has been given to former Swedish prime minister Göran Persson, former Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, and the former director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Kristian Berg Harpviken.
To be ethically credible, the recognition should come from outside the business community, and be esteemed as of the highest possible moral and professional authority. A committee of independent individuals recognised globally for their moral and professional contribution to mankind will consider and confer the Oslo Business for Peace Award. Through their work, the committee will identify the leading businesspersons who spearhead the development ethical business, while creating examples of modern business success.
Members of the Award Committee
Current Members
Leymah Gbowee
Member 2014 – present
Peace Activist and Winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.
Leymah Gbowee is executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa
and a founding member and former coordinator of the Women in Peacebuilding
Program/West African Network for Peacebuilding. For the 2013-2014 academic year,
she was a Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice at Barnard College of Columbia University.
Finn Kydland
Member 2014 – present
Winner of the Sveriges Riksbanks Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2004,
Finn E. Kydland is the Henley Professor of Economics at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He also holds the Richard P. Simmons Distinguished
Professorship at the Tepper School of Business of Carnegie Mellon University.
His main areas of teaching and interest are business cycles, monetary and fiscal
policy and labor economics.
Ouided Bouchamaoui
Member 2016 – present
Ouided Bouchamaoui is the President of The Tunisian Confederation of Industry,
Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA). Bouchamaoui works to help Tunisia pull through
its challenges by pushing for national reconciliation, protecting both enterprises
and employment policy, and assisting the urgent need to restore security. For
this work, Bouchamaoui was made a Business for Peace Honouree in 2014.
In addition, UTICA is one of the four organisations that make up the Tunisian
National Dialogue Quartet, which was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2015.
Eric S. Maskin 
Member 2017 – present
Eric Maskin is the Adams University Professor at Harvard. He has made
contributions to game theory, contract theory, social choice theory, political
economy, and other areas of economics. In 2007, he was awarded the Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economics (with L. Hurwicz and R. Myerson) for laying
the foundations of mechanism design theory, which is the study of how to
achieve social or economic goals when information about citizens’
preferences is incomplete.
Previous Members
Shirin Ebadi
Member 2014 – 2018
Human Rights Advocate and Winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.
Since receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Ebadi has lectured, taught and
received awards in different countries. She has also defended people
accused of political crimes in Iran. She has traveled to and spoken to
audiences in India, the United States, and other countries. Along with five
other Nobel laureates, she created the Nobel Women’s Initiative to
promote peace, justice and equality for women.
Michael Spence
Member 2009 – 2017
Winner of the Sveriges Riksbanks Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred
Nobel 2001. Michael A. Spence is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
and Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate
School of Business, Stanford University. He is the chairperson of an independent
Commission on Growth and Development, which was created in 2006 to focus on
growth and poverty reduction in developing countries.
Muhammad Yunus
Member 2009 – 2013
Grameen Bank Founder and Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2006.
Mohammad, together with the bank he founded, Grameen Bank,
won the Nobel Peace Prize for “for their efforts to create economic and
social benefit from below.” Grameen Bank was established in the belief
that credit is a fundamental human right and with the objective to help
poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms
suitable to them. Replicas of the Grameen Bank model currently
operate in more than 100 countries worldwide.
Wangari Maathai
Member 2009 – 2011
Green Belt Movement Founder and Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2004.
Dr Wangari Maathai was the founder of the Green Belt Movement,
a non-profit, grassroots organisation
based in Kenya. Dr. Wangari and the GBM was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2004 for ”their contribution to sustainable development,
democracy and peace.” Wangari Maathai sadly passed away in 2011.
Her efforts to the benefit of mankind will be long remembered, and
the movement she founded will continue its important work, bringing
hope to the lives of millions. Wangari Maathai’s support for our
foundation has been significant, and we will always remain grateful
for her contribution.