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 Award Committee are Nobel prize winners in Peace or Economics. It is the goal of the Foundation that the committee over time will be increased to five members. 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 recognized 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 worldwide who spearhead the development of the ethical business case, while creating examples of modern business success.

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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 is a Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice at Barnard College of Columbia University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finn Kydland
Member 2014 – present

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. 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
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 chairman of an independent

Commission on Growth and Development, created in 2006 and focused on

growth and poverty reduction in developing countries

 

 

 

 

Muhammad Yunus 
Member 2009 – 2013
Grameen Bank Founder and Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2006.

In 2006 Mohammad Yunus and 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 non-governmental organization (NGO)

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.