2009 Nobel Peace Prize There have been a number of calls for Obama to either return the award or to have the Nobel Committee recall it, most recently in 2013. In April 2013 a petition was begun asking the Nobel Committee to rescind the Peace Prize. The petition garnered 10,000 signatures in its first day and nearly 20,000 by the end of its first week. Nobel laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore called the award "extremely well deserved". Obama received congratulations and kind words from other elected officials, such as from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former rival, Senator John McCain, who
Nobel Peace Prize Norway has been able to use the prize as an instrument for nation building and furthering Norway's foreign policy and economic interests. In another 2011 "Aftenposten" opinion article, the grandson of one of Nobel's two brothers, Michael Nobel, also criticised what he believed to be the politicisation of the award, claiming that the Nobel Committee has not always acted in accordance with Nobel's will. Norwegian lawyer Fredrik S. Heffermehl has criticized the management of the Peace Prize. The awards given to Mikhail Gorbachev, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat, Lê Đức Thọ, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Al