By Sienna Lovelock-Burtt
Late last year, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 was awarded. The accolade was jointly awarded to the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, Ales Bialiatski, a Belarusian human rights activist and political prisoner, and Memorial, a Russian human rights organisation. The Norwegian Committee’s decision is often an overtly political statement, as it was this year, rewarding groups who stood against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
However, the selection drew some backlash from Ukraine - despite Memorial decrying Russia’s invasion at the acceptance ceremony, Ukrainian activists have said it is offensive at this point to have been grouped with a citizen of the country that has wrought so much damage, and a citizen of Belarus, Russia’s closest ally.
Some members of the Ukrainian government have suggested that the Center for Civil Liberties should have rejected the Nobel Peace Prize. The deputy chair of the Ukrainian Parliament’s defence committee, Mariana Bezuhla, posted that it was “inadmissible to accept any prize with Russians and Belarusians.”
There has also been backlash against the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee, for continuing a tradition of being extremely eurocentric. In 2012, the Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union (EU) itself, and the Peace Prize has a history of being awarded to primarily western activists.
The other nominees on the shortlist included Ilham Tothi, an Uyghur activist in China, who worked to promote active dialogue before being imprisoned in 2014, pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, and Harsh Mander, an advocate for religious freedom in India.
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