The Nobel Peace Prize has been described as one of the greatest honors that anyone can receive. Alfred Nobel’s will in 1895 said the the Peace Prize would honor “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”. Since then, the word “person” has been expanded to include organizations.
There are 329 candidates this year for the prize — 234 individuals and 95 organizations. The Prize will be announced tomorrow (Friday) morning. Who, in your informed opinion, will be the winner?
According to www.washingtonpost.com/… and time.com/..., these are the top contenders for the Prize —
- The WHO
- The Covax vaccine initiative
- Ilham Tohti, Uyghur activist
- Israel’s B’Tselem and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights
- Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition activist
- Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and the Belarusian opposition
- Nathan Law, Hong Kong activist
- Reporters Without Borders
- The Committee to Protect Journalists
- Greta Thunberg
- Joe Biden
- Jacinda Ardern
- BLM
I am sure most Kossacks are intimately familiar with these names, but if you need to refresh your memory, you can read more about the background on these candidates at the two links shown above.
Without much ado, let’s do a poll on who will win, not who you want to win. But feel free to add more of your thoughts in the comments section on who will win and why, and who you would like to see win and why.
It might be also useful to indicate in the comment section your 2nd choice.
Here is something to savor this Thursday evening — a documentary on the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize 😄
Here is some food for thought for our troubled times from the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner -—
And then I explained to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.
There is much to be done, there is much that can be done. One person, … one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.
Further Reading
- Facts on the Nobel Peace Prize — www.nobelprize.org/…
- Nomination and selection of Nobel Peace Prize laureates — www.nobelprize.org/…
- All Nobel Peace Prizes — www.nobelprize.org/...
Update
The winners of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize are two activists/journalists who are not even mentioned in the list above.
Dmitry Muratov has for decades defended freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions. In 1993, he was one of the founders of the independent newspaper Novaja Gazeta. Novaja Gazeta’s fact-based journalism and professional integrity have made it an important source of information on censurable aspects of Russian society rarely mentioned by other media. Since the newspaper’s start, six of its journalists have been killed.
Maria Ressa uses freedom of expression to expose abuse of power, use of violence and growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines. In 2012, she co-founded Rappler, @rapplerdotcom, a digital media company for investigative journalism. As a journalist and the Rappler’s CEO, #NobelPeacePrize laureate Maria Ressa, @mariaressa, has shown herself to be a fearless defender of freedom of expression. Rappler has focused critical attention on the Duterte regime’s controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign.