If you look around the world, there seems to be more conflict than peace at the moment. To what extent will this have an impact on the Nobel Peace Prize this time?
Oslo – After the award to the imprisoned Iranian Narges Mohammadi last year, it will be announced today who will next be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce at 11 a.m. in Oslo who it will award this year’s prestigious award.
This time a total of 286 candidates were nominated, including 197 personalities and 89 organizations. Compared to previous years, the field of candidates has shrunk significantly. The Nobel institutions traditionally keep secret who is among the nominees for 50 years. This leads to speculation every year as to who the Nobel Committee will ultimately select.
In times of Middle East conflict, the Ukraine war and dozens of other conflicts around the world, no clear favorite has emerged this time. At a betting office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj, Chinese-Uyghur government critic Ilham Tohti and Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tichanowskaja were recently at the top. Behind them are the states of Ireland, Norway and Spain for their coordinated recognition of a state of Palestine. However, the countries only took this step in early summer, while the nomination deadline for the Nobel Prize had already expired on January 31st.
International organizations among favorites
The director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute Prio, Henrik Urdal, has international institutions on his list of favorites, such as the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Hague.
At the Stockholm peace research institute Sipri, the director there, Dan Smith, can imagine that the committee could forego awarding this year’s prize in view of the currently very tense world situation. This has happened 19 times in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize, but the last time was more than 50 years ago.
Last year, the award went to women’s rights activist Mohammadi, who has been in prison in her native Iran for a long time. She was honored “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”
30 years after Nobel Prize for Palestinian and Israeli leaders
Since the prize was first awarded in 1901, 111 individuals and 27 different organizations have been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, the UN refugee agency UNHCR twice and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) even three times.
As a rule, the Peace Prize is awarded to one personality or organization alone, but sometimes two prize winners share it. The award has only been divided among three chosen people three times, including when the then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the then Israeli top politicians Shimon Peres and Izchak Rabin were honored 30 years ago for their efforts to find a solution to the Middle East conflict – which is currently escalating again.
This week, this year’s Nobel Prize winners in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature were announced. The award in economics will follow on Monday. All of these Nobel Prizes are traditionally awarded in Stockholm, the Nobel Peace Prize is the only one in Oslo.
The awards will be ceremoniously presented on December 10th, the anniversary of the death of the dynamite inventor and prize donor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). They are endowed with prize money of eleven million Swedish crowns (just under 970,000 euros) per category. dpa
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