STOCKHOLM, October 7. /TASS/. The Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner in Oslo on Friday.

In 2021, the award was given to Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov and Filipino journalist Maria Ressa for "their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." The Nobel Peace Prize, according to the will of Alfred Nobel, is awarded to those who have "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." According to the last will of the Swedish industrialist, inventor and manufacturer, this prize, unlike other awards established in accordance with his will, is awarded not in Stockholm, but in Oslo. Nobel wrote that the decision to award the prize should be made by a committee of five people appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. By tradition, the members of the committee are mostly retired Norwegian politicians and former party leaders.

Recently, the more than a hundred-year-old wording has been interpreted quite broadly, which is why the decisions of the committee are often criticized. Laureates of the award in recent years have included politicians, human rights activists, political activists and humanitarian organizations with merits in a variety of fields.

According to the Nobel Committee, there are 343 candidates for the 2022 Nobel Peace prize, out of which 251 are individuals and 92 are organizations, becoming the second highest number recorded in history. The record was set in 2016 when the list included 376 candidates.

Possible 2022 candidates

Henrik Urdal, current director of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, who annually draws up a list of possible contenders, considers it likely that this year's award will go to former Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Russian blogger Alexey Navalny.

Other possible candidates, according to Urdal, could be the International Court of Justice, Indian human rights activist Harsh Mander, and India's nationwide civic campaign the Karwan-e-Mohabbat (Love Caravan or Peace Journey), which was launched in September 2017 in solidarity with the victims of violence during public unrest or on religious grounds. The professor's list includes the names of Hong Kong activists Nathan Law and Agnes Chow, as well as Uyghur rights advocate Ilham Tohti, a non-profit organization Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) from the US San Francisco, engaged in the analysis of violations human rights around the world, and the Belgrade-based Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), which trains activists in nonviolent forms of protest and resistance.

On the betting sites, in turn, the top line of the list of applicants is occupied by the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky (4:1), the Ukrainian independent English-language Internet media The Kyiv Independent (5:1), followed by the "people of Ukraine", Tikhanovskaya and Navalny with equal chances (6:1). Those organizations, which have slightly smaller chances, are the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (8:1), the Committee to Protect Journalists (10:1), and the World Health Organization (12:1).

About the award

The Nobel Peace Prize was first awarded in 1901. There were years when the winner in this nomination was not announced, the last time it happened in 1972. The reasons were World War 1 and 2, contradictions between the members of the committee and "lack of worthy candidates."

The award ceremony will take place in Oslo on December 10, on the anniversary of Nobel's death. The size of the monetary component of the Nobel Prize in each nomination this year, as in the past, will be 10 million Norwegian kroner ($910,000 at the current exchange rate).