Nobel Peace Prize Frontrunners Include Greta Thunberg, WHO, and BLM
Published Oct. 4 2021, 2:51 p.m. ET
Greta Thunberg speaks during the climate strike march on Oct. 1, 2021 in Milan, Italy.
The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded this week — and the coveted award’s list of frontrunners includes climate activist Greta Thunberg, among a few major organizations fighting for a more equitable world, activists, politicians, and more.
Greta Thunberg is in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize for the third year in a row.
Thunberg is the third most likely candidate (and No. 1 most likely individual) to win the Nobel Peace Prize this year, Gambling.com tells Green Matters in an email. The gambling website predicts an odds of +800 and an 11.1 percent probability for the 18-year-old climate activist to win.
Even though Thunberg isn’t the most likely to win according to betting agencies, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s director Dan Smith still believes she is the strongest and most likely choice.
“I think the most likely and also highly desirable prospect is awarding the honor to young climate change activists (including Greta Thunberg but as one of a crowd of recipients) from all round the world,” he told CNN.
This is the third year in a row that Thunberg has been a reported nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2019, when she was 16, the Norwegian Socialist Left party formally nominated Thunberg for the prize. The award went to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Had Thunberg won that year, she would have beat Malala Yousafzai’s record for the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, as the activist was 17 when she won in 2014.
In 2020, Two Left Party Parliamentarians nominated Thunberg for the award once again. Instead, it went to the United Nations’ World Food Programme.
This year, there is one other climate candidate in the running — Gambling.com has also listed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as having a 6.7 percent chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize this year.
The World Health Organization is the No. 1 frontrunner for the Nobel Peace Prize 2021.
As Gambling.com tells us, the World Health Organization (WHO) is the most likely recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, with an odds of +125 and a 44.4 percent probability. Two British gambling companies, Betfair and William Hill, also have the WHO listed as the most likely winner of the prize, as per CNN.
The WHO has faced more challenges than ever over the past almost two years as it has fought to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, and many believed that the WHO should have won last year.
Black Lives Matter is another likely candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Black Lives Matter comes in as the second most likely winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, with odds of +600 and a 14.3 percent probability of winning. The Black Lives Matter Global Network, first founded in 2013, is an organization that is working to end white supremacy and end violence against Black communities.
The organization — and the phrase “Black lives matter” as a rallying cry — has become much more well-known since May 2020, when the murder of George Floyd inspired mass racial justice protests across the U.S., which were the biggest ones since the Civil Rights Movement, as per CBS News.
When will the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner be announced?
Each day this week (and Monday, Oct. 11), another Nobel Prize will be announced, in topics including medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, and economic sciences. The recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, Oct. 8, 2021, at 11 a.m. CEST (2 a.m. ET).
In addition to the nominees outlined above, Gambling.com reports that other frontrunners for the prize include Reporters Without Borders, Putin opposer Alexei Navalny, Belarisuan politician and activist Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Hong Kong-based politician and activist Nathan Law Kwun-chung, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and President Joe Biden.
