Greta Thunberg to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya: Here are the Nobel Peace Prize 2021 favourites
Nobel Peace Prize 2021: The Nobel committee received as many as 329 nominations this year, and it will have the tough task to choose who is deemed most worthy of the prestigious honour.
The Nobel Institute will announce the much-anticipated Nobel Peace Prize 2021 in the Norweigan capital of Oslo on Friday, and a host of names – from climate campaigner Greta Thunberg to Belarus opposition leaders, and even media watchdogs are among those who have been tipped for the prestigious prize. It is, however, a giant guessing game as the institute is not known to publish a shortlist unlike some of the other Nobel recognitions. The Nobel Peace Prize this year will be announced at 0900 GMT (around 2:30pm Indian time) when the wooden doors of the Nobel Institute's main hall creak open to make way for Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, who will announce the winner.
The Nobel committee received as many as 329 nominations this year, and it will have the tough task to choose who is deemed most worthy of the prestigious honour in 2021. Among those whose names have been generating the most buzz this year are –
> Media watchdogs: Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) or the International Fact-Checking Network
> Anti-corruption watchdog: Transparency International
> Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and her two allies, Maria Kolesnikova and Veronika Tsepkalo
> Ales Bialiatski, another opponent of Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, who is widely regarded as authoritarian and his claim to power in the August 2020 elections fraudulent
> Climate change activists such as Greta Thunberg, who was 2019's TIME Person of the Year and has been a favourite for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since then.
> Alexei Navalny, one of the most influential critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin, although his name is being bandied about to a lesser extent this year.
> The World Health Organisation could also be a potential laureate this year, considering the impact that the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has left in this world and the emergence of a global authority on the associated protocols.
> Other world leaders – such as US president Joe Biden, German chancellor Angela Merkel, or New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern, are also said to be in the race, according to TIME Magazine, but the matter is entirely speculative at this point.
Whoever wins, it is not yet known whether the laureate will be able to travel to Oslo to pick up the award, due to the pandemic. The prize -- consisting of a diploma, a gold medal and a cheque for 10 million kronor (980,000 euros, $1.1 million) -- is traditionally awarded on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the prize creator Alfred Nobel. The Peace Prize is the only Nobel to be awarded in the Norwegian capital.