Peter Nobel

Peter Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 8, 1931. He was a great-grandson of Ludvig Nobel, the brother of Alfred NobelAlfred NobelAlfred Nobel (1833–1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor and industrialist who invented dynamite, the blasting cap, blasting gelatine and the smokeless powder ballistite and founded enterprises in more than 20 countries. Through his will he left his fortune to establish the five Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.Open the full entry, and thus a great-grandnephew of Alfred Nobel.⁠[1][2][3]

As of 1997 he was married with three sons.⁠[1]

He earned a Bachelor of Laws (jur.kand.) at Uppsala University. A 2021 Uppsala University press release dates the degree to the 1950s, while a candidate biography circulated by the United Nations in 1997 gives 1963. He also studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, the University of Göttingen and the Salzburg Seminar.⁠[4][1]

He first worked as a defence and family law attorney. From 1963 to 1986 he was a partner in the law firm Chrysander in Uppsala, and from 1966 to 1986 he was also a notary public for Uppsala.⁠[2][1]

He became increasingly involved in immigration and asylum matters. He recognised early that asylum applications could not be handled without insight into the human rights situation in the countries concerned, and in the 1960s he took part in numerous debates, particularly about African countries.⁠[2][4][5]

From 1970 to 1981 he sat on the board of the Swedish Bar Association (Sveriges Advokatsamfund); from 1970 to 1976 he served on Uppsala’s municipal social welfare committee; and from 1976 to 1983 he was a board member of the Municipal Theatre of Uppsala-Gävle.⁠[1]

In October 1974 Nobel, then a lawyer and advocate in Uppsala, formed an Amnesty International mission with Asbjørn Eide, director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, and Kees Van Vuuren, a physician from Rotterdam, to investigate reciprocal allegations by Israel and Syria of ill-treatment and torture of prisoners of war from the October 1973 war. The mission held interviews in Nathanyia, north of Tel Aviv, on October 16 and 17, 1974, and in Damascus on October 21 and 22.⁠[6]

The mission’s report, published in April 1975, found that no individual case could be proven beyond doubt, but concluded that violations of the Third Geneva Convention had indeed led to certain abuses against a number of former prisoners of war. Uppsala University notes that he also took on the repatriation of prisoners of war after the 1973 Middle East war.⁠[6][5]

From 1977 to 1979 he was a member of the organising committee of the Pan-African Refugee Conference in Arusha, and from 1980 he sat on the board of the European Human Rights Foundation.⁠[1]

In 1985 he became an honorary doctor of the Faculty of Law at Uppsala University.⁠[4][1]

Sweden’s Act against Ethnic Discrimination (Lag (1986:442) mot etnisk diskriminering), issued on June 5, 1986, provided that the government would appoint an ombudsman to work against ethnic discrimination in working life and other areas of society.⁠[7]

In 1986 the government appointed Nobel as Sweden’s first Ombudsman against Ethnic Discrimination, a post he held until 1991; Uppsala University describes it as the first such post in the world as well. He later recalled that the issue was completely new at the time, and that the work meant exposing serious, unlawful mistreatment of people because of their skin colour, appearance or origin.⁠[1][4][2]

From 1988 to 1997 he was a member of the Council of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo.⁠[1]

From 1991 to 1994 he was secretary-general of the Swedish Red Cross; from 1991 to 1995 he also chaired the organising committee of the International Congress of Human Rights NGOs in Uppsala.⁠[1][2]

In April 1993 he published the article “The role of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in promoting respect for human rights” in No. 293 of the International Review of the Red Cross. He later continued international work within the UN and the EU.⁠[8][2]

From 1994 to 1997 he was president of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Lund.⁠[1]

After the M/S Estonia sank on September 28, 1994, Marita Ulvskog, then head of the Ministry of Public Administration (Civildepartementet), appointed Nobel on November 8 that year as special investigator to provide information and general guidance to relatives of the victims and to survivors; the appointment ran from November 4, 1994, until his tasks were completed, and no later than June 30, 1995.⁠[1][9]

In December 1996 he signed, with secretary Gunilla Upmark and deputy secretary Iréne Pierazzi, the report Efter Estonia (SOU 1996:189) in Stockholm, setting out how the assignment was interpreted and carried out, the observations and experience gained, and a summary and proposals for the future.⁠[9]

From 1995 he was a member of the Ethical Committee of the Press (Pressens Opinionsnämnd).⁠[1]

A document circulated by the UN Secretary-General on December 4, 1997 (CERD/SP/59) for the election of nine members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination listed Nobel as Sweden’s nominee, with a biography stating that he had recently been elected to the Board of Trustees of International Alert in London.⁠[1]

From 1998 to 2001 he served as an expert on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, with a term due to expire on January 19, 2002. He resigned with effect from March 1, 2001, and Sweden did not appoint another of its nationals to serve the remainder of his term.⁠[5][10]

The economics prize was established by Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, in 1968 and was not among the prizes created by Alfred Nobel’s 1896 will. In 2001 Nobel wrote a newspaper article asking the bank to set the economics award apart from the other five prizes and to make clear that it was given in Alfred Nobel’s memory.⁠[11][12]

That year he said the family wanted a clear distinction between the original Nobel prizes and the economics award, adding that “it is like an intrusion in the trademark”.⁠[3]

In September 2005, days before that year’s economics laureates were announced, Nobel, then 73, called the prize “a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation”, argued that Alfred Nobel would never have created it and said it was most often awarded to stock market speculators. He said he preferred the Peace Prize and considered the Nobel banquet so orchestrated that it had become more of a television show.⁠[11]

In October 2010 Nobel issued a statement criticising the economics prize on two grounds: that it was a misleading intrusion into the concept of the Nobel Prize and what it stands for, and that it had one-sidedly rewarded Western economic research and theory. He also said statements in Alfred Nobel’s letters suggested that he disliked economists, and described what had happened as an outstanding example of successful trademark infringement.⁠[13]

He proposed that this bank prize in Alfred Nobel’s memory be presented on an occasion other than Nobel Day.⁠[14]

In August 2014, when a Nazi party was granted permits to demonstrate in one Swedish city after another, Nobel argued that the permits ran completely counter to the UN convention against racism, which Sweden had signed in 1969, said he could not understand why a decent country like Sweden could not fulfil its obligation to the UN, and criticised Beatrice Ask for saying that existing legislation was sufficient.⁠[15]

In June 2021 Uppsala University awarded Nobel its 2021 Martin H:son Holmdahl Prize for human rights and freedoms, the university’s highest honour for promoting human rights, worth SEK 50,000. The citation said that through lifelong active engagement in academic teaching and public debate he had kept human rights and humanitarian law on the agenda at the university’s Faculty of Law and nationally and internationally.⁠[4][5]

The university noted that in recent years he had paid particular attention to the rights of the Sámi people and had been deeply involved in efforts to ban racist organisations, and that he lectured frequently, even during the pandemic.⁠[4][5]

On May 31, 2026, Nobel’s family announced that he had died after a period of illness, aged 94.⁠[2]

Uppsala University: Official website: https://www.uu.se/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

Swedish Red Cross: Official website: https://www.rodakorset.se/ (opens in a new window)⁠[16]

UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination: Official website: https://www.ohchr.org/en/treaty-bodies/cerd (opens in a new window)⁠[17]