In the lowest number in four years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it had received 305 nominations for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Among those nominations are 212 individuals and 93 organizations.

In 2022, the Committee in Oslo saw 343 submissions. “For eight years in a row, the number of candidates has been exceeding 300. The current record of 376 candidates was reached in 2016,” the committee statement said.

Who is said to have been nominated?
It is standard procedure for the names to not be released officially for 50 years after nominations are made.

However, those eligible to nominate — including former winners, lawmakers, and some university professors — are free to reveal the name of the person or organization they have put forward.

Many of the names publicly disclosed until now were involved in the war in Ukraine or included opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was nominated himself in 2021.

Among them are Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, and a Ukrainian group working to establish an international war crimes tribunal.

Others said to have been nominated are jailed Putin opponents such as activist Alexei Navalny, journalist and political activist Kara-Murza and the pro-democracy youth movement Vesna.
Iranian women’s activist Masih Alinejad and her anti-hijab movement My Stealthy Freedom are rumored to be nominated.

Also believed to be among the submissions are Chinese and Hong Kong pro-democracy activists such as Chow Hang-tung, Peng Lifa and the group Uyghur Tribunal. Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN Kyaw Moe Tun and the anti-junta coalition NUCC are said to be amid the nominations, too.

Maggie Gobran, an activist helping the poor in Cairo’s slums, is another reported candidate.

Climate activists Greta Thurnberg from Sweden and Vanessa Nakate from Uganda are said to have been nominated this year, too.

The winner is to be announced in early October. The prize will then be presented on December 10, the anniversary of the death of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), who founded the prizes.

Last year, the prize was shared by the Russian human rights group Memorial, Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties and jailed Belarusian rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, all three of which have been critical of the war in Ukraine.