The 2023 price will be announced in early October. Each year, several hundred names are proposed.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Jens Stoltenberg, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Mourza are among the candidates for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. All were nominated before the deadline on Tuesday for their role in the war in Ukraine or for their opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
An elected representative from the Norwegian populist right has hinted that he will put the name of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the jury as a symbol of resistance to the Russian invasion launched on February 24, 2022.
He also put forward the name of his compatriot Jens Stoltenberg who, according to him, “deserves the prize for his exemplary work as Secretary General of NATO in a difficult period for the Alliance”.
In addition, the President of the Pakistani Senate highlighted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his peace efforts “before and during the Russia-Ukraine war”.
Two opponents of the Russian regime are also cited among the potential winners: Alexeï Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Mourza. The first is an anti-corruption activist imprisoned in Russia after being the victim of an attempted poisoning there. The second is a journalist imprisoned after having also survived, he says, two poisonings.
The two previous editions of the Nobel have already given pride of place to criticism of the former KGB spy. Director of the Institute for Peace Research in Oslo (Prio), Henrik Urdal considers it unlikely that the Nobel Committee will give a layer for the 2023 prize under penalty of being considered a “Eurocentrist”. “It was difficult for the committee to look beyond last year because the conflict in Ukraine was so big and dominant… but it is also essential to shine the spotlight on other international issues in other parts of the world” , he told AFP.
A peace prize for conservationists comes up regularly among recent speculations. Norwegian Green MP Lan Marie Berg announced on Tuesday that she had named two young climate activists, 20-year-old Swedish Greta Thunberg, whose name has been circulating for years, and Ugandan Vanessa Nakate, 27.
According to Nobel statutes, the list of candidates is kept secret for at least 50 years. But the thousands of sponsors (parliamentarians and ministers from all countries, former winners, certain university professors, etc.) are free to reveal the identity of their “foal”.
