Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian civil rights campaigners are the joint winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize
Ales Bialiatski takes the award for his work as a human rights advocate in Belarus
The Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation the Center for Civil Liberties are also winners
They are recognised for their “outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power”, the Nobel Committee says
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually to a person, or people, who have worked to benefit humankind
The announcement was made at a news conference in the Norwegian capital, Oslo
Previous winners of the Nobel medal include Barack Obama in 2009 and Malala Yousafzai who shared the prize in 2014
Ales Bialiatski, the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties (CGS) and Memorial, one of Russia’s oldest human rights groups, all won the prestigious accolade
Bialiatski is a Belarusian human rights activist, who founded a human rights body of his own in response to protest crackdowns. He’s currently being held in pre-trial detention
CGS, set up in 2007, has monitored political persecutions in occupied Crimea and documented war crimes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Memorial, which was shut down earlier this year, worked to recover the memory of the millions of innocent people executed, imprisoned or persecuted in the Soviet era
The award carries significant prestige on the world stage – and the winners will share prize money of 10m Swedish krona (£803,000; $897,000)
The Peace Prize caps off a week of Nobel awards announcements
The chairwoman of the Nobel committee was quizzed by reporters after her announcement whether this year’s peace prize recipients were intended to send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose 70th birthday is today.
Berit Reiss-Andersen said the prize was given to those helping peace.
She denied the committee was “addressing President Putin, not for his birthday nor anything else”, saying the prize was “not against anyone” but given for positive actions.
Reiss-Andersen added: “The attention that President Putin has drawn on himself, that’s relevant in this context, is on civil society and human rights advocates being suppressed.
“That’s what we want to address for this prize.”
