NORWAY: The prestigious Nobel Peace Prize 2022 will be awarded to jailed Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Byalyatski, along with Russian human rights watchdog Memorial and Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties, as declared by the awards committee on Friday.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence in the neighbouring countries of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine,” said Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen. She urged Belarus to release Byalyatski from prison.
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 10 million Swedish kronas or crowns ($900,000), will be presented in a grand ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the death anniversary of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the six most prestigious awards in history, established by the Swedish chemist and inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, in 1895. The accolade, which is awarded to those “who have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”, is also given in other categories, which include literature, physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and economic sciences.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said, “The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. They have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens.”
“They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses, and abuses of power,” the Committee added. “Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.”
The Peace Prize winner’s declaration follows a list of other winners who received the stamp of recognition in other fields backed by the Nobel Committee.
The Nobel Prize for Literature was announced in favour of French author Annie Ernaux, “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory.”
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared among Barry Sharpless, Morten Meldal, and Carolyn Bertozzi for their introduction of click chemistry into the era of functionalism and the navigation of that technique to map cells.
Alain Aspect, John Cluaser, and Anton Zeilinger shared the medal for the Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking experiments that demonstrated the potential to investigate and control particles in entangled states.
Meanwhile, Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022 “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.”
Also Read: Three Scientists Received Nobel Prize in Quantum Physics
