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CordellHull, 1945: Hull, a US politician, was given the prize for his role in establishing the United Nations. He is a controversial winner, says Time, because of an incident in 1939 when he was President Roosevelt's Secretary of State. The President was amenable to helping 950 Jewish refugees aboard a ship called the SS St Louis settle in America. But Hull and a group of Democrats from the American South voiced "strong opposition", threatening to withdraw support for Roosevelt if he let the ship dock. The president buckled, the SS St Louis was turned around and many of its passengers became victims of the Holocaust.
YasserArafat, 1994: One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Arafat, who led the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) for three decades, was handed the award alongside Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and his foreign minister Shimon Peres. The trio were cited for their work on the Oslo accords which created "opportunities for a new development toward fraternity in the Middle East". Supporters compared Arafat to Nelson Mandela, says Time. Opponents called him an "unrepentant terrorist with a long legacy of promoting violence".
BarackObama, 2009: Riding high on the goodwill sparked by his election victory the previous year, Obama was a popular winner. At the time, America's first black president said he didn't deserve the award. Four years down the track, plenty of people seem to agree with him. In an article published by the Daily Beast last month, Kirsten Powers says it's time for Obama to give his Nobel Peace prize back. She cites his determination to attack Syria, with or without a UN Security Council resolution, as one reason; the escalation of a "pointless and failing" war in Afghanistan is another. But the main reason Obama should turn in his prize is his "five-year Middle East drone war" which has killed an estimated "500 to 800 innocents", writes Powers.
