Who will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? Not Trump but a 'quiet winner'

'Classic values' of prize point to any contender's whole track record, say observers

A bust of Alfred Nobel stands outside the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. Reuters

A grand total of 338 people and organisations were nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, but the candidate least likely to win is Donald J Trump.

Consensus among Nobel watchers has it that the man who craves it most has least chance.

The five-strong committee is expected to play it safe and choose someone without controversy when the decision is announced on Friday. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prestigious peace prize, held its final meeting on Monday, the Nobel Institute said Thursday, a day ahead of the announcement of the 2025 laureate.

This means a decision was made about the laureate or laureates before the conclusion of an agreement between Israel and Hamas, which included a ceasefire and the release of hostages.

The committee's choices in recent years have demonstrated “a return to more micro things, somewhat closer to classical ideas of peace”, with a focus on “human rights, democracy, freedom of the press and women”, said Halvard Leira, the director of the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs.

“My hunch would probably ... be for a not-that-controversial candidate this year,” Mr Leira said.

The committee should assess whether there have been “clear examples of success” in their peacemaking efforts, said the head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Karim Haggag.

Mr Haggag said the prize ought to go to people working quietly behind the scenes.

The Nobel Committee should shine a light on “the work done by local mediators and local peace builders on the ground”, he said.

“These are actors who have been forgotten in many of the world's forgotten conflicts,” he said, giving Sudan, the Sahel and countries in the Horn of Africa – Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea – as examples.

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is considered a possible winner. AFP

Potential winners

Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms – networks of volunteers risking their lives to feed and help people enduring war and famine – are one such group, Mr Haggag said.

Media watchdogs such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders could also be honoured after a deadly year for reporters, especially in Gaza.

“Never before have so many journalists been killed in a single year,” said Nina Graeger, the head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo.

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, is also among the favourites.

A humanitarian organisation working in an environment that has become more challenging partly due to Mr Trump's US aid cuts could be highlighted. This could mean an award for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the UN children's agency Unicef, or the Red Cross.

It could also highlight local mediators negotiating ceasefires and access to aid in conflicts, such as peace committees in the Central African Republic, the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding or the Elders and Mediation Committee in El Fasher, Darfur.

“Any of these would be deserving of the award,” said Mr Haggag.

For the committee’s current leader, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the recipient must act as a “symbol of courage and hope”.

“We should learn from their stories and never give up,” he said. “In a world of conflict and darkness, the peace prize is still a symbol of hope.

“Each year the laureates are examples of courage and show we are not destined by some genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn, and we can make a positive difference for the societies we live in.”

An employee of the Norwegian Nobel Institute holds a replica of a Nobel Peace Medal in Oslo, Norway. Reuters

How does it work?

Tens of thousands of people are eligible to propose candidates for the award, including politicians and cabinet members of all countries, former laureates, some university professors and Nobel committee members.

The deadline is January 31, after which point only the committee can add names. The list is whittled down to about 50 quite swiftly, getting shorter after each meeting, before a final decision is made in the first week of October.

“To be nominated does not mean they have been endorsed by the committee,” said Mr Frydnes. The committee only reveals how many nominations were received, not the identities, which remain secret for 50 years.

Secrecy is important for the safety and well-being of those choosing.

“Their lives could be at stake,” he said. “For 124 years there have been all types of lobbying campaigns and people who want to share their opinion of who should be the recipient. It is part of being on the committee.”

And while anyone can be nominated, there are criteria the committee looks for.

“We take the complete picture into account,” he said, which means the whole organisation or “complete personality” of the nominee matters. “What have they been achieving for the sake of peace?”

US President Donald Trump's campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize is likely to backfire, according to veterans of the prize. AFP

Don’t ask

Lobbying is generally counter-productive, according to the deputy leader of the present Norwegian Nobel Committee.

“These types of influence campaigns have a rather more negative effect than a positive one, because we talk about it on the committee. Some candidates push for it really hard and we do not like it,” Asle Toje said.

“We are used to work[ing] in a locked room without being attempted to be influenced. It is hard enough as it is to reach an agreement among ourselves, without having more people trying to influence us,” he added, with a smile.

For Mr Frydnes, the attention does not affect the work.

“All politicians want to win the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said. “We hope the ideals underpinned by the Nobel Peace Prize are something that all political leaders should strive for … We notice the attention, both in the United States and around the world, but outside from that, we work just the same way as we always do.”

Peace ideals

Alfred Nobel's will, which established the award, says the prize should go to the person “who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations”.

That is something Mr Trump is not doing, according to Ms Graeger.

“He has withdrawn the US from the World Health Organisation and from the Paris Accord on climate. He has initiated a trade war on old friends and allies,” she told Reuters.

“That is not exactly what we think about when we think about a peaceful president or someone who really is interested in promoting peace.”

Mr Trump “is in many ways the opposite of the ideals that the Nobel Prize represents”, according to Eivind Stenersen, a historian who has conducted research and co-written a book on the prize.

It's “completely unthinkable” that Mr Trump could win, he believes, as he is dismantling the international world order the award committee cherishes.

“The Nobel Peace Prize is about defending multilateral co-operation, for example in the UN … and Trump breaks with that principle, he follows his own path, unilaterally,” he added.

Asle Sveen, a historian of the award, said Mr Trump has “no chance at all”, citing his support for Israel in the war in Gaza and his attempts at rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, among the reasons.

Barack and Michelle Obama arrive for the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony at City Hall in Oslo in 2009

Unlikely winners

Last year, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Japan's atomic bomb survivors' group Nihon Hidankyo for its efforts to have nuclear weapons banned.

But there have been many surprising candidates to have won in the past, including Barack Obama less than eight months after he became US president, and US national security adviser Henry Kissinger at the height of the Vietnam War.

“Sometimes people have received the Peace Prize in spite of a brutal record, an authoritarian record, a background where they've contributed to evil, or at least wrongdoing,” said Henrik Syse, a former member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

“But they had explicitly seen the things that they had contributed to were wrong, and therefore took the steps necessary to correct these wrongs,” he said, giving the example of FW de Klerk, the last apartheid-era leader of South Africa, who won the prize jointly with Nelson Mandela in 1993.

Should Mr Trump be able to put pressure on Mr Putin to end the war in Ukraine or on Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war in Gaza, he could well be discussed as a possible candidate, Ms Graeger said.

Not this time

The backdrop for this year’s prize is bleak: the number of armed conflicts worldwide involving at least one state has never been as high as in 2024, since Sweden's Uppsala University started its global conflict database in 1946.

Mr Trump has repeatedly said he deserves the prestigious prize for resolving “eight conflicts”, and suggested it would be an insult if he was not chosen.

Nobel veterans say the committee prioritises sustained, multilateral efforts over quick diplomatic wins. Theo Zenou, a historian and research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, said Mr Trump's efforts have not yet been proven to be long-lasting.

“There’s a huge difference between getting fighting to stop in the short term and resolving the root causes of the conflict,” Mr Zenou said.

Therefore it will not be Mr Trump this year, according to Swedish professor Peter Wallensteen, an expert on international affairs.

“But perhaps next year? By then the dust will have settled around his various initiatives, including the Gaza crisis,” he added.