OSLO/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny are among the favorites for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, but experts say advocates for the rights of women, indigenous peoples or of the environment could finally win the prestigious award.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prize, is also capable of creating a surprise during its announcement on October 6, which it has already done in the past.
Although bookmakers consider Volodimir Zelensky a leading candidate to join the illustrious list of winners, which ranges from Nelson Mandela to Martin Luther King, Nobel Prize experts believe that as a wartime leader, the Ukrainian president has little chance of being nominated.
The chances of Navalny, currently imprisoned, are diminished by the fact that Russian dissidents have been honored with the prize in 2022 and 2021.
The third favorite is Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti, but that would infuriate China, which froze diplomatic ties with Oslo for six years when dissident Liu Xiaobo received the peace prize in 2010.
Henrik Urdal, director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute, said that in this year marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Committee may decide to highlight the contribution of peace activists.
Awarding a prize to Tohti or another activist in China would highlight Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian regime, he added.
Urdal also cited the Iranian activist for women’s rights and the fight against the death penalty Narges Mohammadi, currently in prison, as well as the Afghan Mahbouba Seraj who, despite the ban on the Taliban in power, continues to campaign for girls’ right to education and other women’s rights, and who remains in Kabul.
A PEACE IN THE WAY OF DISINTEGRATION
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to imprisoned Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, Russian rights group Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, in what many saw as a slap in the face for Russian President Vladimir Poutine.
The Nobel committee may also want to focus on climate change, a topic it last addressed in 2007 when awarding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice -President of the United States, Al Gore.
“We are living in a time of disintegration of peace. At the same time, it is a time when the pressure of a massive ecological crisis is upon us,” said Dan Smith, director of the International Peace Research Institute from Stockholm.
Smith cites in particular the “Fridays for Future” movement, launched by young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, as well as the leader of the indigenous Kayapo people in Brazil, Raoni Metuktire, who has campaigned for decades for the protection of the Amazon rainforest.
Urdal, for his part, said the rights of indigenous peoples could be a focus, citing former special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, the Philippines Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, and Ecuadorian indigenous leader Juan Carlos Jintiach.
Other potential winners include the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), its children’s fund (UNICEF) or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
(Reporting Gwladys Fouche in Oslo and Ilze Filks in Stockholm; French version Diana Mandiá)
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