For decades, prestigious awards and honorary degrees have been given to world leaders with, at best, questionable reputations. For the awarding nations and organizations, such honors perform valuable diplomatic functions, cementing strategic alliances and trade deals and massaging authoritarian egos. For the recipients, the cachet they confer can help to paper over everything from human rights abuses to state corruption.

Whether such decorations capture the attention of the international community or domestic audiences, they provide a powerful reputational boost, especially for figures who care about their public image. After all, not everyone can have the bluff assurance of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who once said, “Those who do not love me do not deserve to live.”

Still, they are not bulletproof. For instance in 2018, France made moves to strip the Legion of Honor, the country’s highest order of merit, from President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Assad preemptively returned the award, saying that he would not wear a medal from a country that was “a slave to America.” 

Despite its many pitfalls, the practice is still alive and well today. Here, we take you through six examples, past and present.