The Nobel Peace Prize for all children of this world
A personal note by Bernhard Hanel, founder of the World Child Forum, published on 20 September 2025
An invitation to all of us to reshape the world from the so powerful perspective of childhood. What if all the children of this world received the Nobel Peace Prize?
This simple, almost childlike question arose in me one day before the summer solstice in Stockholm. On a very lively afternoon in front of the venerable Grand Hotel, where every December the Nobel laureates stay with their families. Children's voices echoed across the water, boats drew their paths, somewhere cups clinked, as if the day wouldn't let itself be disturbed despite the state of the world. It was precisely this contrast—the carefree and the weighty together—that made me pause.
So what if all the children of this world received the Nobel Peace Prize? Not a single child, not a symbol. But all of them. The two billion children living on this earth. Including those who are injured or killed in wars. Who starve, toil, must remain silent. Who are not allowed to attend school, have no home, no security. Children whom we deny what should be self-evident: safety, love, participation.
What if we dedicated the Nobel Peace Prize to all of them—as a sign that we are finally paying attention? Not out of pity, but out of recognition. Not because they are weak, but because they show us every day what truly matters. Children possess a natural gift for peace, and to promote and honour this is a strong argument for nomination. Children are natural peacemakers. They do not seek conflict. You can send children to war, but they do not start it. Anyone who puts children's wellbeing at the heart of their actions will always make peace. Because that is what children need.
A peaceful world in which they can grow and develop. In war, they are always the first to suffer. And at the same time, the first to give hope again the moment conflicts end. Because through them one sees a future again, for them reconstruction is worthwhile, and it is they who will do better in future and bring reconciliation. The Nobel Peace Prize for all children would not be a romantic idealisation, but would pose an existential question to us all: What kind of world do we want to build for children?
Children live what we have often lost: trust, curiosity, imagination. From our children we can learn not to see the future as merely more of our weary present, but to think openly again—with a courage that doesn't know what's coming and precisely therefore has no fear.
A Nobel Peace Prize for all children would not be a nostalgic fairy tale. It would be a new measure. Not a prize for achievements, but a promise. For the reality is painful: 152 million children toil instead of learning. 244 million have no access to education. More than 400 million grow up in conflict regions. We must finally stop thinking in categories that regard children as a "target group", as a "future generation". They are not a later hope—they are the present. And their dignity cannot wait.
The World Child Forum—an open, creative complementary movement to the World Economic Forum—has therefore launched an initiative that is more than an appeal: it is an attempt to change the narrative of our time. On 20 September, World Children's Day, this idea shall be announced. By 10 December, the awarding of this year's Nobel Prize, we want to build a global alliance to submit this proposal.
Whether the Nobel Committee will follow this proposal is not the decisive question. What matters is that we pose the question. A Nobel Prize for all children would not be a political statement, not a PR gesture. It would be a poetic lighthouse. In a time when we create tools more powerful than ever before, we need not more power—but more courage and measure. And what could be a more just measure than the question: Does what we do serve a world in which every child can unfold their potential and has a future? A world in which a child in Gaza, in Kyiv, in Kampala or in Cologne counts equally? Not in numbers, but in their being and in their dignity? Amidst crises and technologies, profit logics and political maneuvers, we return to the world's simplest measure: the child.
Not the ideal, the quiet, the obedient child—but the real one, with their questions, their defiance, their longing for meaning and answers to every why. Then we could see the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize not as an end, but as a beginning. As an invitation to all of us to think anew, to act differently, and as adults to rediscover the child within us and to reshape the world from the so powerful perspective of childhood.
Warmly and with thanks to all supporters – to everyone who shares this question with others. Bernhard Hanel
Additional information
A new measure for our time
Two billion children. One Nobel Peace Prize. Not symbolic gesture - new standard. When every decision must ask "Does this serve children?", everything changes. Politics. Business. Society.
Context and facts
How does one nominate two billion people? What are the Nobel Peace Prize criteria? Learn about the process, the precedents, and the possibilities.
How ideas really travel - through people
Now that question needs voices like yours. At tables where you already gather. On walks where you already think. When you ask: "What if all children were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?" Share what stirs. Not because we asked you to. Because the question won't let you go.