QWho will be honored this year with the prestigious award? The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, are among the favorites to win the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize on October 11 , almost a year after the Hamas terrorist massacres in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Given its history, the Norwegian Nobel committee is capable of surprising when it announces the award of the prize on October 11. He might even refrain from attributing it. If Alexeï Navalny, a prominent opponent of the Kremlin, is favored by “bookmakers”, the Russian, who died last February in a penal colony in the Arctic, cannot receive the prize posthumously. Another favorite, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, cannot win the Nobel Peace Prize because he leads a country at war.
“UNRWA could be a candidate”
With a year 2024 marked by the war in the Gaza Strip which has now expanded into the region, a conflict in Ukraine entering its third year and bloody clashes in Sudan, the Nobel committee could want to highlight the actors humanitarian workers who are working to meet the needs of civilians.
“UNRWA could be a candidate. He is doing extremely important work for Palestinian civilians suffering from the war in Gaza,” the director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute told Reuters.
ALSO READ Hamas-Israel war: why UNRWA must be closed (and quickly)Henrik Urdal added that awarding the prize to UNRWA would be a controversial decision, given accusations by Israel that some agency employees played a role in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Several countries suspended aid allocated to UNRWA following Israeli accusations. Most donors have since resumed their financial support for the agency.
An internal UN investigation released in August found that nine employees may have been involved in the Hamas attack and were fired. The agency, at the same time, accuses Israel of working to dismantle it.
Antonio Guterres, the ICJ, Pope Francis… or even no one?
The Nobel committee could choose to highlight the need to preserve the international order built on the ashes of the Second World War and thus celebrate its symbol: the UN. This could mean awarding the prize to the organization’s secretary general, Antonio Guterres, perhaps jointly with the highest UN court, the ICJ, said Asle Sveen, a historian specializing in the Nobel Peace Prize.
He stressed to Reuters that Antonio Guterres was “the highest symbol of the United Nations” and that the ICJ had “the most important duty to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected everywhere”. The ICJ condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ordered Israel to ensure no genocide is committed in the Gaza Strip. The investigation by the UN jurisdiction was denounced by the Jewish state as unfounded.ALSO READ What the UN and Hamas are hiding about UNRWA in GazaThere remains the hypothesis, which cannot be ruled out, that the Nobel committee decides not to award the prize to anyone, as has already happened nineteen times – the last of which was in 1972. “Perhaps “This is the year in which the Nobel Peace Committee must simply refrain from awarding prizes and return attention to the fact that this is a planet at war,” the director of the Nobel Peace Prize told Reuters. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Dan Smith.
Thousands of people, including former winners, parliamentarians and historians, can nominate candidates. A total of 286 candidates were nominated this year, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Pope Francis and British naturalist David Attenborough.
