Stockholm: Speculation mounted yesterday that Angela Merkel could scoop this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership during Europe’s migrant crisis after she was being tipped by one of Germany’s leading newspapers and experts in Norway.
Ahead of the Nobel prize season beginning on Monday, Germany’s influential Bild newspaper said Merkel, 61, had “a good chance” of winning, in part for her open-door policy on refugees fleeing war and persecution.
“Reasons: Her actions in the Ukraine crisis and the refugee policies,” it said.
A total of 276 nominations have been submitted for the prize, two short of 278 last year. Norwegian Nobel Institute never discloses the list, leaving amateurs and experts to resort to a guessing game ahead of October 9 announcement.
But Kristian Berg Harpviken, Director, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), is one of a few experts who has the audacity to make a bet. “Angela Merkel will get the Peace Prize,” he told reporters in Oslo.
In his annual shortlist of possible winners, she is followed by the Colombian government and FARC rebels for their peace process, and Putin-critical Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta for perseverance in independent reporting. “Merkel is the one who took moral leadership and turned the debate on refugee issues in a European context entirely around,” Harpviken said.
The crisis also topped the list at Nobeliana.com, a website run by Norwegian Nobel historians. Its top prediction was a shared prize to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — which won the prize in 1954 and 1981 — and Eritrean Catholic priest Mussie Zerai, who has helped thousands of refugees cross the Mediterranean. Nobeliana also had Novaya Gazeta in second spot.
Other names and organisations circulating in the run-up to the announcement include Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his US counterpart John Kerry for the Iran nuclear deal, International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Arms (ICAN), Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege who has treated thousands of women brutalised by rape in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and Japan’s pacifist Article 9 Association. AFP
