The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo on Friday. This time, the winner will be chosen from among 331 nominations (216 individuals and 115 organisations) which the second highest number of nominees ever, next only to the 376 nominated in 2016. 98 Peace Prizes have been awarded till now, with 131 winners (104 individuals and 27 organisations). Of the 104 individual Laureates, 16 have been women. In 2017, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
Alfred Nobel, in his will allocating most of his wealth to the establishment of the five Nobel Prizes, wrote: “The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts… one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
The Nobel Prize Committee chooses the Laureate by a vote after the Peace Prize nominations are received. A nomination may be submitted by anyone who meets certain criteria, including: members of national assemblies and heads of states; members of The International Court of Justice and The Permanent Court of Arbitration; professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; previous Peace Nobel winners; and current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Committee rules prohibit disclosure of the nominees or nominators for 50 years.
Of the 104 individual Nobel Laureates, 16 have been women, including Mother Teresa (1979) who founded Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi (1991) and Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai (2014). Malala, also the youngest Laureate at 17, shared the 2014 award with India’s Kailash Satyarthi. Another Peace Prize winner from the subcontinent has been Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank (2006).
Other prominent Peace Laureates include American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr (1964), exiled spiritual leader Dalai Lama (1989, living in India), anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela (1993, before he became South Africa President), and former US President Barack Obama (2009).