- Title: NORWAY: Speculation ahead of Nobel Peace Prize announcement
- Date: 6th October 2010
- Summary: OSLO, NORWAY (RECENT) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF THE NOBEL INSTITUTE VARIOUS OF ALFRED NOBEL BUST OUTSIDE INSTITUTE TEXT ON BUST SAYING "ALFRED NOBEL" EXTERIOR OF PRIO (INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, OSLO) BUILDING PRIO DIRECTOR KRISTIAN BERG HARPVIKEN WALKING INTO HIS OFFICE (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRIO DIRECTOR KRISTIAN BERG HARPVIKEN SAYING: "I have suggested t
- Embargoed: 21st October 2010 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Norway
- Country: Norway
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA39OK10OHHMLAD0OG9MNGCK46Q
- Story Text: Every year speculation is rife in the days leading up to the secretive Norwegian Nobel Committee's announcement of who they have chosen to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, head of the International Peace Institute in Oslo (PRIO) that lists their favourites to win the prize every year, said this year's prize was most likely to be awarded to a candidate who had made "a significant contribution to the prevention, amelioration or resolution of armed conflict, in line with the spirit of Alfred Nobel's will".
He said had three top candidates for the prize this year.
"I have suggested three favourites this year. The first one is the Afghan human rights activist and women's rights activist Sima Samar, the second one is the independent and Diaspora based media channel the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) and the third one is the special court for Sierra Leone - a transitional court set up to hold war perpetrators in Sierra Leone responsible," he said.
Samar is an Afghan human rights activist, with a focus on women's rights and is currently leading the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
DVB, based in Oslo, has a large network of reporters inside Burma who file regular reports from the tightly controlled country. PRIO said DVB had been good at adapting new technology allowing them to film and transmit various stories, often at a considerable risk to the people involved.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone was initiated by President Kabbah of Sierra Leone and was set up in 2002 in agreement between the United Nations and the Sierra Leone government. PRIO said the court had been praised for its relative effectiveness, lack of serious delays and problems, and especially for its local outreach work.
Harpviken said this year's prize would return closer to Alfred Nobel's notion of peace after past prizes were awarded to climate campaigners, life-long diplomats, grass-roots economists and the President of the United States, Barack Obama.
"I think this year it's going to be very tempting for the committee to revert to the core values of the peace prize. There has been quite a bit of critique of last year's peace prize to (United States) President (Barack) Obama and I think it would be good for the prize's reputation and of course for the committee's reputation to zoom in on the core values," Harpviken said.
Some say the recent prizes have strayed too far from Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel's 1895 will, in which he says the accolade will go to those who do most for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for peace congresses.
Other leading candidates include Chinese and Russian dissidents, such as Hu Jia and Lidia Yusupova, but Harpviken said it was unlikely a Chinese dissident would get the prize considering the strong reactions that could be expected from the Chinese government should this happen. He also said a Russian candidate was unlikely since the chief of the Nobel committee, former Labour Prime Minister Thorbjoern Jagland, is also the boss of the Council of Europe, which may make it awkward to award a dissident from a member country from the human-rights club.
But former Norwegian prime minister and now the head of a think tank, Kjell Magne Bondevik, said it could be a human rights defender or a international organisation.
"I know there are candidates, human rights defenders from China who are nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize and some of them are very respected and have done a great job for the human rights situation in their own country so I will not be surprised if it will be one of them but I don't know. The Nobel Committee works in secrets," Bondevik said.
Guesses are often widely off course, since the secretive five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee does not disclose the nominees.
This year the committee has had a record number of nominees to choose from said Committee Chairman Geir Lundestad.
"This year we had a record number of candidates - 237 and the previous record from last year was 205 so we are very happy that the number of nominations is going up and this of course means that we have many good candidates from many different corners of the world and this is the way it should be and this means that we have a lot of good candidates to choose from," said Lundestad, a non-voting member of the secretive Nobel panel.
The recipient of the 2010 peace prize will be announced on October 8 in the Norwegian capital. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None