World News | 305 people nominated for 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, committee says

COPENHAGEN, Feb. 22 (AP) — The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Wednesday that 305 candidates had been nominated for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize by the Feb. 1 deadline, the lowest number in four years. In accordance with Committee practice, the names of 212 individuals and 93 organizations were not released.

The Oslo-based organization said that was down from 343 candidates last year, the lowest number of registered candidates since 2019. The number of annual candidates has surpassed 300 for the past eight years, it said, adding that the provisional record was set in 2016 with 376.

Read also | Pakistan: A doctor belonging to the minority Ahmadi community has been shot dead in Punjab province, police say.

“Who nominated and who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize has been a secret for 50 years,” the very secretive Oslo-based committee said in a statement.

A wide group of people can submit nominations for the prize: heads of state or politicians serving at the national level, university professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, past Nobel laureates and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Read also | Vladimir Putin health update: The Russian president’s health has relapsed and he will receive new treatment in March, reports say.

However, the person making the nomination may choose to make it public, increasing the visibility of the nominee and proposer.

Norwegian Green Party MP Lan Marie Nguyen Berg nominated two climate activists, Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and Uganda’s Vanessa Nakate, to “engage in massive mobilization” on their continent.

Thunberg has been nominated four times, including last year when the award went to human rights activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

The 2022 ruling is a sharp rebuke of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has shattered decades of near-uninterrupted peace in Europe, and the president of his authoritarian ally Belarus.

On Feb. 1, Henrik Urdal, director of the Oslo Institute for Peace Research, named the human rights activist as his favorite to win the 2023 prize. They include Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi and Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj; Myanmar’s representative to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun; and the Netherlands-based International Court of Justice, among others.

Urdal noted that 2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that his list “reflects timely and valuable attention to human rights defenders and activists.”

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway, and other awards in Stockholm, Sweden, in line with the wishes of the founder of the awards, Alfred Nobel.

The five Nobel Prizes were established by Nobel’s will. The sixth is economics, created by the Riksbank in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel. Winners will be announced in early October.

The laureates received their awards at a ceremony on December 10, held on the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896. Prizes include a diploma, a gold medal and cash prizes of 10 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million) — usually shared.

The Nobel Peace Prize has always attracted more controversial or surprising nominees than its scientific cousin. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are both nominated for 2021. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)