The 2025 Tipperary International Peace Prize trolls the Middle East

Qatar wins peace prize.

The Tipperary International Peace Award was presented to the Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, in the grandly named Ballykisteen Great National Hotel this week. The Hotel is around the corner from the infamous Limerick Junction train station in County Tipperary, if you were inclined to visit sometime.

So there they were, the suits and the sheikhs, gathered in a banquet room where the cups of tea flowed like Qatari gas money, all there for an award to the absurd. Of all the cynical ploys in modern international relations, the spectacle of an authoritarian state laundering its reputation in the name of peace is galling. A nation built on the backs of an exploited migrant workforce, where dissent is a crime and basic freedoms are denied. Are you a woman who thinks she should be able to, I don’t know, marry, travel or receive reproductive healthcare without permission from a male relative? Slow down there, suffragette. In Qatar, a woman must obtai…