'One of the Worst Awards Someone Could Possibly Get': FIFA Blasted for Giving Trump Made-Up 'Peace Prize'

President Donald Trump, whose administration is engaged in a boat-bombing campaign in the Caribbean that human rights organizations and legal experts consider a murder spree, has finally been given a peace prize.

Although Trump tried unsuccessfully this year to get the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award him its prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, he was given something of a consolation gift on Friday when FIFA, the official governing body behind the World Cup, gave him its first-ever FIFA Peace Prize.

After being given the award, Trump called it "truly one of the great honors of my life," and suggested he deserved it for supposedly "saving millions and millions of lives."

A Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health study released last month estimated that Trump's decision to shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already caused hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, and a study published this summer by medical journal The Lancet projected that the end of USAID will lead to up to 14 million preventable deaths over the next five years.

According to the New York Times, the announcement awarding Trump the prize was "so hastily arranged that it surprised several of the body’s most senior officials, including board members and vice presidents."

The paper also noted that the prize was just the latest effort by FIFA president Gianni Infantino to shower Trump with flattery whenever possible.

"Mr. Infantino has lauded Mr. Trump at almost every opportunity, attending events that have little to do with soccer, handing over major FIFA trophies to Mr. Trump, and presiding over FIFA’s rental of office space in Trump Tower in New York two years after the organization opened a gleaming North American hub in Miami," the Times reported.

Human Rights Watch was quick to blast FIFA for giving Trump any sort of peace prize given what it described as the administration's "appalling" human rights record.

Jamil Dakwar, human rights director at the ACLU, also said that Trump was undeserving of the award, and he noted the administration "has aggressively pursued a systematic anti-human rights campaign to target, detain, and disappear immigrants in communities across the US—including the deployment of the National Guard in cities where the World Cup will take place."

Dakwar also called on FIFA "to honor its human rights commitments, not capitulate to Trump’s authoritarianism."

Daniel Noroña, Americas advocacy director for Amnesty International USA, also warned FIFA that many soccer fans could end up being targeted by federal immigration officials for trying to attend World Cup games in US cities next year.

"The threat of excessive policing, including immigration enforcement, at World Cup venues is deeply troubling, and FIFA cannot be silent," he said. "FIFA must obtain binding guarantees from US authorities that the tournament will be a safe space for all, regardless of political stance, opinion, or immigration status."

Anti-war group CodePink protested against Trump's award of the FIFA prize in Washington, DC, and argued that the president is "escalating war on Venezuela, protecting Israel’s continued attacks on Palestine, and terrorizing our communities with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the National Guard," and thus should not receive any honors for his supposed peacemaking efforts.

Other critics, however, argued that FIFA was the perfect organization to give the president a made-up peace prize given its long history of corruption and bribery scandals.

@EiFSoccer, an account on X primarily dedicated to soccer news, said that "the FIFA Peace Prize is unironically one of the worst awards someone could possibly get," given that it was being handed out by "one of the most corrupt sporting institutions of all time."

"Winning the FIFA Peace Prize is like winning the Dahmer Culinary Award," joked journalist Mark Jacob on Bluesky.

Fashion commentator Derek Guy, meanwhile, wondered "WTF is a FIFA Peace Prize" and then equated it to "being an NFL laureate in physics."