Nobel Peace Prize could honour contributions of activists: Experts
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This year's winner will be announced on Oct 6.
PHOTO: AFP
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OSLO/STOCKHOLM - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian dissident Alexei Navalny are among favourites for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, but experts say campaigners for women, indigenous people or the environment could well steal the stage.
Given past form, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is also capable of a complete surprise in the Oct 6 announcement.
Though bookmakers have Mr Zelensky as a top candidate to join the illustrious list of laureates from Mr Nelson Mandela to Mr Martin Luther King, Nobel specialists believe that as a wartime leader, the Ukrainian President is unlikely to be named.
The imprisoned Navalny’s chances are lessened because Russian dissidents won in 2022 and the year before.
A third bookmakers’ favourite is jailed Uighur activist Ilham Tohti, though that would infuriate China. When jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo won the peace prize, Beijing froze diplomatic relations with Oslo for six years.
Dr Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said in a year marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the committee may decide to shine a light on the contribution of activists to peace.
A prize to Mr Tohti or another activist in China would be a welcome focus on Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian rule, he said.
Dr Urdal also cited Iran’s Ms Narges Mohammadi, who campaigns for women’s rights and against the death penalty, and is currently in jail; Afghanistan’s Ms Mahbouba Seraj who, despite a ban from the ruling Taliban, continues to campaign for girls’ rights to education and other women’s rights and remains in Kabul.
“I think perhaps the most likely candidates would be human rights defenders,” he said.
‘Disintegrating peace’
Thousands of people can propose names, including former laureates, Members of Parliament and university professors of history or law. Nominations are secret for 50 years but those who nominate can choose to reveal their choices.
The 2022 prize, seen by many as a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, went to jailed Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties.
The Nobel body may also want to spotlight climate change, a topic the committee last addressed in 2007 in its award to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US vice-president Al Gore.
“This is a period of disintegrating peace. At the same time, it’s the period when the pressure of a massive ecological crisis is putting its weight on us,” said Dr Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “Climate change, clearly in some circumstances, leads to more conflict.”
Dr Smith cited the Fridays for Future movement, started by Miss Greta Thunberg, as a contender, as well as Chief Raoni Metuktire of the indigeneous Kayapo people in Brazil, who has for decades campaigned to protect the Amazon rainforest. “Indigenous involvement in protecting the environment is really going to be fundamental to our prospects of surviving this current crisis,” he said.
Dr Urdal agreed indigenous peoples’ rights could be in focus, citing Ms Victoria Tauli-Corpuz of the Philippines, previously the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and Ecuadorean indigenous leader Juan Carlos Jintiach.
Other potential laureates include an international body like the International Court of Justice, the UN refugee agency UNHCR, its children’s fund Unicef, or the International Committee of the Red Cross. REUTERS
