Nobel Peace Prize: Is this Greta Thunberg's year?
Send a link to a friend
[October 01, 2021]
By Nora Buli and Gwladys Fouche
OSLO (Reuters) - The Nobel Peace Prize will
be announced just three weeks before world leaders gather for a climate
summit that scientists say could determine the future of the planet, one
reason why prize watchers say this could be the year of Greta Thunberg.
The world's most prestigious political accolade will be unveiled on Oct.
8. While the winner often seems a total surprise, those who follow it
closely say the best way to guess is to look at the global issues most
likely to be on the minds of the five committee members who choose.
With the COP26 climate summit set for the start of November in Scotland,
that issue could be global warming. Scientists paint this summit as the
last chance to set binding targets for reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions for the next decade, vital if the world is to have hope of
keeping temperature change below the 1.5 degree Celsius target to avert
catastrophe.
That could point to Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, who at 18
would be the second youngest winner in history by a few months, after
Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai.
"The committee often wants to send a message. And this will be a strong
message to send to COP26, which will be happening between the
announcement of the award and the ceremony," Dan Smith, director of the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told Reuters.
Another big issue the committee may want to address is democracy and
free speech. That could mean an award for a press freedom group, such as
the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Without Borders, or
for a prominent political dissident, such as exiled Belarus opposition
leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya or jailed Russian activist Alexei
Navalny.
A win for a journalism advocacy group would resonate "with the large
debate about the importance of independent reporting and the fighting of
fake news for democratic governance," said Henrik Urdal, director of the
Peace Research Institute Oslo.
A Nobel for either Navalny or Tsikhanouskaya would be an echo of the
Cold War, when peace and literature prizes were bestowed on prominent
Soviet dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Oddsmakers also tip groups such as the World Health Organization or the
vaccine sharing body COVAX, which are directly involved in the global
battle against COVID-19. But prize watchers say this could be less
likely than might be assumed: the committee already cited the pandemic
response last year, when it chose the U.N. World Food Programme.
[to top of second column]
|
16-year-old Swedish Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at the
2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit at U.N. headquarters in
New York City, New York, U.S., September 23, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo
Allegri
While parliamentarians from any country can nominate
candidates for the prize, in recent years the winner has tended to
be a nominee proposed by lawmakers from Norway, whose parliament
appoints the prize committee.
Norwegian lawmakers surveyed by Reuters have included Thunberg,
Navalny, Tsikhanouskaya and the WHO on their lists.
SECRETS OF THE VAULT
The committee's full deliberations remain forever secret, with no
minutes taken of discussions. But other documents, including this
year's full list of 329 nominees, are kept behind an alarmed door
protected by several locks at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, to be
made public in 50 years.
Inside the vault, document folders line the walls: green for
nominations, blue for correspondence.
It is a trove for historians seeking to understand how laureates
emerge. The most recent documents made public are about the 1971
prize, won by Willy Brandt, chancellor of West Germany, for his
moves to reduce East-West tension during the Cold War.
"The Europe you see today is basically the legacy of those efforts,"
librarian Bjoern Vangen told Reuters.
The documents reveal that one of the main finalists Brandt beat out
for the prize was French diplomat Jean Monnet, a founder of the
European Union. It would take another 41 years for Monnet's
creation, the EU, to finally win the prize in 2012.
(Editing by Peter Graff)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|