The prize is awarded by a committee of five chosen by Norway’s parliament.
The winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in Oslo later Friday.
The prize is awarded by a committee of five people chosen by Norway’s parliament.
Last year’s accolade was given to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end.”
Officially, the names of nominees are meant to be kept secret for at least 50 years, but names do get leaked, often by overzealous nominators. Often, they are inaccurate.
Each year, Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) draws up its own shortlist based on its own assessment of qualified and deserving candidates.
For 2017, PRIO has identified what it feels are five possible winners:
No pontiff has ever won the prize, but Pope Francis is favored by bookmakers. In recent years, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also been seen as worthy candidate for her decision to open her country’s borders to more than 1 million refugees since 2015.
Technically, anyone can get nominated by an eligible nominator. These are usually distinguished academics, heads of research institutes, politicians or former laureates.
History has delivered a few suspect nominees, Adolf Hitler notably, in 1939. For the past two years, Donald Trump’s name has made it onto the list.
Between 1901-2016,97 Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded. Other stats related to the prize: 2 have been divided between three persons; 16 women have been recipients; 62 is the average age of laureates the year they were awarded the prize; 1 winner, Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho, declined the prize; 3 winners were under arrest at the time of the award: German pacifist and journalist Carl von Ossietzky, Burmese (now Myanmar) politician Aung San Suu Kyi and Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo.
This year’s award comes amid debate about whether Suu Kyi — who won the prize in 1991 — should be stripped of the honor. The de facto leader of Myanmar has drawn condemnation for her defense of her country’s treatment of its Rohingya population, a minority Muslim group. Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar in the thousands for neighboring Bangladesh amid atrocities in Rakhine state.
Friday’s announcement in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, caps a week in which Nobel laureates have been named in medicine, physics, chemistry and literature.
