Nobel Peace Prize could honour UNRWA, ICJ, UN chief Guterres

The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), the International Court of Justice and UN chief Antonio Guterres are among the favourites for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, experts said, in a year marked by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

Given past form, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is capable of springing a complete surprise in the 11 Oct announcement - including not giving the prize at all.

Bookmakers have Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony in February, as a favourite to win this year's award. But that is not possible as he cannot receive the prize posthumously.

Another bookies' favourite, Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is unlikely to win because he is the leader of a nation at war.

Instead, with 2024 marked by the now spreading Israel-Hamas war, a Ukraine conflict in its third year and bloodshed in Sudan displacing more than 10 million, the committee may want to focus on humanitarian actors helping to relieve civilian suffering. 

"UNRWA could be one such candidate. They're doing extremely important work for civilian Palestinians that experience the sufferings of the war in Gaza," Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, told Reuters.

A prize to UNRWA would be controversial, he added, given the allegations made by Israel that some of its staff took part in the 7 Oct, 2023, attack on southern Israel by militant group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.

Some countries halted their funding to UNRWA as a result of the allegations. Most donors have since resumed. In August, an internal UN investigation said that nine staff members may have been involved in the attack and have been fired.

UNRWA has said Israel is trying to have the organisation disbanded. The agency, set up in 1949 in the aftermath of the war over Israel's creation, provides humanitarian assistance to millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL GUTERRES

The secretive five-strong awarding committee, appointed by the Norwegian parliament, may also want to focus on the need to bolster the international world order built after the Second World War and its crowning institution, the United Nations.

That could mean a prize to its secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, with or without its top court, the ICJ, said Asle Sveen, a historian of the Nobel Peace Prize.

"Guterres is the top symbol of the UN," Sveen told Reuters. "(And) the ICJ's most important duty is to ensure that international humanitarian law is applied globally."

The ICJ has condemned Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and called on Israel to ensure that no genocide is committed in Gaza in an ongoing case Israel has repeatedly dismissed as baseless.

But the committee could also decide that no one gets the prize, something that has happened on 19 occasions, the last time in 1972.

"Maybe this is the year in which the Nobel Peace Prize committee should simply withhold the prize and focus attention on the fact that this is a warring planet," Dan Smith, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told Reuters.

Thousands of people can propose names, including former laureates, members of parliaments and university professors of history or law. Nominations are secret for 50 years, but those who nominate can choose to reveal their choices.

Some of the known nominees include the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, Pope Francis and British naturalist David Attenborough. In total 286 candidates have been nominated for this year's prize.

Last year's prize went to Narges Mohammadi, an imprisoned Iranian women's rights advocate, in a rebuke to Tehran's theocratic leaders and boost for anti-government protesters.