Who will win today's Nobel Peace Prize?
After an enforced break on Thursday, Nobel week returns today with the annoucement of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. The bookmakers favourites include North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his South Korean counterpart.
The winner of the award that since 1901 has gone to the person or group that has done the most to advance world peace over the last year, will be announced in Oslo at 11am.
The choice of laureates, selected by a five-member panel named by Norway’s parliament, has proved controversial down the years, not least with some of their subsequent actions.
Only on Tuesday it was announced that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not be stripped of the prize she was given in 1991 despite her country's treatment of the Rohingya Muslims.
Previous winners have included Yasser Arafat and former US President Barack Obama.
There are 331 candidates for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, 216 of which are individuals and the rest are institutions, but their names are kept secret.
Speculation on potential winners has been rife on social media, and vary from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, who top the odds with some bookmakers, to Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters and Docters Without Borders.
US President Donald Trump has also been nominated by eighteen Republican lawmakers “in recognition of his work to end the Korean War, denuclearize the Korean peninsula and bring peace to the region.”
Last year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), led by Swede Beatrice Fihn, received the gold medal and the SEK 9 million in prize money. It was the 23rd organization (as opposed to individual) to win the prize since its establishment in 1901.
WHY NORWAY?
Alfred Nobel stated in his will that the peace prize should be awarded by a Norwegian committee while the other four prizes were to be handled by Swedish committees. However, no-one knows the real reason behind his decision. Sweden and Norway were united under the same monarch until 1905.
