Oslo:
US voting rights activist and Democratic Party politician Stacey Abrams has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for her work to market nonviolent adjust by way of the ballot box, a Norwegian lawmaker mentioned on Monday.
Abrams, whose work was credited with boosting voter turnout final year, assisting Joe Biden win the US presidency, joins a lengthy list of nominees, which includes each former President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, former White House adviser Jared Kushner.
“Abrams’ work follows in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s footsteps in the fight for equality before the law and for civil rights,” mentioned Lars Haltbrekken, a Socialist Party member of Norway’s parliament.
King, a Baptist minister who became a leader of the 1960s civil rights movement, won the Nobel prize in 1964 and remains amongst its most well-known laureates.
“Abrams’ efforts to complete King’s work are crucial if the United States of America shall succeed in its effort to create fraternity between all its peoples and a peaceful and just society,” Haltbrekken mentioned.
Thousands of persons, from members of parliaments worldwide to former winners, are eligible to propose candidates, and a nomination does not imply endorsement from the Nobel committee in Oslo.
Other candidates this year incorporate Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, the World Health Organization and climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
The US Black Lives Matter movement, as nicely as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the “Pentagon Papers” about the Vietnam War, US Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and WikiLeaks, have also been nominated, as have pro-democracy and civil rights campaigners from Belarus to Poland and Hungary.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which decides who wins the award, does not comment on nominations, but nominators can pick out to reveal their picks.
Prominent former US winners incorporate Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and former vice president, Al Gore.
The 2021 laureate will be announced in October.
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