Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize, The Nobel Peace Prize has turned the global spotlight back on the conflict in Syria.

The prize committee in Oslo, Norway, awarded it Friday to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international chemical weapons watchdog helping to eliminate the Syrian army’s stockpiles of poison gas.

Its inspectors have just begun working in the active war zone, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it hopes the award offers “strong support” to them as they face arduous and life-threatening tasks.

But the OPCW did not receive the prize primarily because of its work in Syria, committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said. “It is because of its long-standing efforts to eliminate chemical weapons and that we are now about to reach the goal and do away with a whole category of weapons of mass destruction. That would be a great event in history, if we can achieve that.”

Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize, The Nobel Peace Prize jury has received 231 nominations for this year’s award, a spokesman said, with publicly disclosed candidates including a former Ukrainian prime minister and the U.S. soldier accused of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks.

The secretive committee doesn’t reveal who has been nominated, but those with nomination rights sometimes announce their picks.

Names put forward this year include Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private charged with the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, Russian human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Others believed to have been nominated include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Being nominated doesn’t say anything about a candidate’s chances. A wide range of submissions come in every year from lawmakers, university professors and others with nomination rights, but the decision rests solely with a five-member panel appointed by Norway’s parliament.

This year’s list of candidates is a mix of repeat nominations and new names, the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s nonvoting secretary Geir Lundestad told The Associated Press.

“They are from all over the world, very many well-known names and some that are not so well-known to the public,” he added.

The deadline for outside nominations was Feb. 1, but the five-member committee added its own suggestions at a meeting Friday, Lundestad said.

Last year’s prize was shared by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian women’s rights campaigner Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen.

Some critics say the committee has departed from award founder Alfred Nobel’s intentions by broadening the scope of the peace prize to include efforts to promote the environment and human rights.

Earlier this month a Swedish authority that oversees foundations in Stockholm — including the Nobel Foundation — said it would investigate whether the peace committee is complying with Nobel’s will.