Slew of world conflicts fog Nobel Peace Prize guessing game

NORWAY: With a slew of conflicts tormenting the planet, observers say the field of possible winners for this year's Nobel Peace Prize is wide open, though some suggest it could go to Eastern European activism or the Arab Spring.

Will a theorist of non-violent protests whose ideas inspired the Arab Spring uprisings be honoured, or perhaps a Russian or a Belarusian human rights activist? The speculation ahead of Friday's prize announcement is rife, but so far no one stands out as a clear favourite.

“The Arab Spring, or maybe rather the Arab Autumn, is still dominating the news,” Jan Egeland, a Norwegian who heads the European section of Human Rights Watch, told AFP, pointing out that the uprisings that brought the overthrow of autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and rattled others were also at the forefront of Nobel Peace Prize speculation last year.

“What is new is that (the movement) brought hope when the prize was given last year and that it today is rather a source of frustration,” he said.

In 2011, the Nobel Committee in Oslo hailed the wave of protests across the Arab world by handing Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman the prize, alongside two Liberian women who today are butting heads, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and peace activist Leymah Gbowee.

But the protest movement has since seen its share of disillusionment, with the Syrian civil war spiralling ever further out of control, Libya facing militia clashes. AFP