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286 personalities and organizations were selected for the prestigious award, awarded this Friday October 11 in Oslo. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is chosen by a committee of 5 people, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. In 2023, Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian women’s and human rights activist still imprisoned in her country, received the prize.

The founder of the Wikileaks organization, Julian Assange, was released in June 2024 after an agreement with the American justice system, which was pursuing him for having published in 2010 more than 700,000 confidential documents on American military and diplomatic activities in Afghanistan and Iraq . He faced up to 175 years in prison. On Tuesday October 1, he spoke for the first time since his release from prison in June before a Council of Europe commission responsible for studying his conditions of detention. «I pleaded guilty to doing journalism »he said. He is recognized internationally for being a symbol of press freedom after revealing the methods of torture inflicted on prisoners of war by the American army during their interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is considered a leading candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize due to his commitment to defending his country against Russian aggression since February 2022. He was also one of the favorites to receive this prize in 2023, but the director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute, Henrik Urdal, had declared that “the committee would probably think twice before giving the award to a president at war […] even if Ukraine is the victim of this war […] There will always be atrocities, even on the Ukrainian side”reports West France . The fact that he is the leader of a nation at war could prevent him from receiving this award.

It has been 10 years since Ilham Tohti, a Uighur economist, was sentenced to life imprisonment by Chinese courts for denouncing violence against Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region of China. This professor from the University of Minorities in Beijing founded the site Uighurbiz.net, which listed all the attacks suffered by the Uighur minority. In 2019, he received the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize.

The UN Secretary General could win the Nobel Peace Prize for his peaceful positions on the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas conflict and his commitment to the climate crisis. At the initiative of Antonio Guterres, countries and heads of government gathered on September 22 and 23 at the Future Summit to adopt a pact that includes measures around international peace, security and development sustainable. On October 2, it was declared “persona non grata” by Israel which criticizes it for not having condemned the Iranian attack of October 1 against the Hebrew state.

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• The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

Created in 1949, UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, provides humanitarian aid to 5.9 million people in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, this agency has helped deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip to meet the needs of the civilian population. At the start of 2024, several countries, including the United States, suspended their grants of 244 million euros to UNRWA after nine employees were suspected of having participated in the Hamas attack on Israel, the October 7, 2023. They have since been fired by the agency.

• The International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice could receive the Nobel Peace Prize on October 11, in recognition of its promotion of peace through international law. This year, it issued several orders, after being seized by South Africa which denounced the genocide committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and asked to immediately stop the offensive of the Israeli army in Rafah. The prosecutor of the international criminal court, Karim Kahn, had requested arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defense minister, Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders, for alleged crimes committed in the Gaza Strip and in Israel.

• EMERGENCY RESPONSE ROOMS au Soudan

Sudan has been facing an internal conflict since April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The NGO EMERGENCY RESPONSE ROOMS (ERRs) in Sudan is one of the organizations providing the most aid to civilians. Since the start of the war, 4 million people affected by the war in Sudan have been supported by the ERRs. This association intervenes to repair infrastructure and provide medical care, food and water to refugees. The conflict, which has lasted for a year, has left more than 20,000 dead and more than 10 million people displaced within the country.

• The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)

2024 is considered a banner election year. Worldwide, more than 4 billion people of voting age are called to the polls. According to Varieties of Democracy a tool for measuring democracies, 71% of the world’s population lives in authoritarian regimes. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights analyzes elections in 57 countries around the world. In its latest report, the ODIHR commits to promoting: “democratic elections, to ensure respect for human rights, tolerance, non-discrimination, and to strengthen the rule of law” in the Member States. Members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee have often promoted organizations that support the importance of free and fair elections such as ODIHR.