According to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, the Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. Volodymyr Zelensky, WHO, David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, and Alexey Navalny were nominated among others.

This year’s Peace Prize was awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski. An activist for Belarusian independence and democracy since the early 1980s, Bialiatski founded the Viasna Human Rights Centre in 1996, an organization that has been working on the protection of civil and political rights in the country.

The organisation focuses on the abolition of the death penalty, as well as on the end of torture, ill-treatment and political persecution.