North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are among the bookmakers' top contenders to win this year's Nobel Peace Prize. US President Donald Trump, Pope Francis, Edward Snowden, Vladimir Putin, and Saudi blogger Raif Badawi are also among the favourites to be awarded the prestigious prize, which is set to be announced on Friday. But Australian betting website SportsBet has Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, to win at odds of $2.03. READ MORE North Korea pledges to permanently close missile sites if US reciprocates Kim and Moon are at $2.64, followed by President Trump at $9.60, UNHCR ($11.50), Nadia Murad ($17.25), Denis Mukwege ($17.25) and Reporters Without Borders ($21.00). Badawi is at odds of $30 while Pope Francis is a longer shot at $52. There are 331 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018 - the second highest number of candidates ever. The record of 376 candidates was set in 2016. Of the candidates, 216 are individuals and 115 are organisations. Kim Jong-un to win an 'extraordinary' proposition Relations between the two Koreas were low in 2017 following North Korea's spate of nuclear weapon and missile tests. But thanks to their leaders, both countries have taken tentative steps toward nuclear disarmament. At a summit in September, they signed a declaration announcing they planned to turn the Korean peninsula into a “land of peace without nuclear weapons and nuclear threats." The two nations were separated at the end of the Korean War in 1956. President Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by 18 Republican lawmakers in recognition of his efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula and bring peace to the region. AAP Australian Former foreign minister Julie Bishop praised Trump's "unorthodox" approach to dealing with North Korea. Ms Bishop said the US president had built a "personal relationship" based on trust with the North Korean leader. "It has led to a situation where bookies are backing Kim Jong-un and President Jae-in Moon to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in a couple of hours from now," she said in Sydney. "That is an extraordinary proposition in anyone's language." US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to North Korea this weekend for denuclearisation talks, with the state department calling the move "forward progress", despite negative signals from Pyongyang.<doc-sep>Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: It won’t be Donald Trump. The president has on several occasions suggested that he should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomatic outreach to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Several other figures, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in and former British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, have suggested he deserves it. Bookmakers are giving him bizarrely good odds. But don’t count on it. For one thing, Trump is probably not even nominated. The Norwegian Nobel Committee reported in February that a nomination for Trump was found to have been forged. (The full list of 331 nominations won’t be publicly revealed for 50 years, though many are made public by the nominators.) Trump has since been nominated by two members of Norway’s governing Progress Party and a number of Republican members of U.S. Congress, but he won’t be eligible until 2019. Trump is intensely unpopular in Europe—including in Norway, the committee’s home country, where his approval rating was just 13 percent in a poll this year. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But if not Trump, who will win the prize? It’s a notoriously tricky award to predict given the number of candidates and opaque process, but here, in no particular order, are a few intriguing possibilities: Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un The biggest story on the peacemaking front this year is the improving climate on the Korean peninsula, where a devastating nuclear conflict appeared quite possible just last year. Kim Jong-un wouldn’t be the first official from an authoritarian regime or human rights abuser to win the prize, but it still seems unlikely that the committee would overlook the prison camps, starvations, and executions that are commonplace under his regime, not to mention the fact that he has yet to actually give up his nuclear weapons and doesn’t appear to be in any hurry. Advertisement Could Moon take home a solo prize for the unlikely rapprochement, following in the footsteps of his predecessor Kim Dae-jung, who won it for his conciliatory “sunshine policy” in 2000? It’s possible, but keep in mind that nominations had to be submitted by Jan. 31, before the historic Kim-Moon meeting in April, and the committee may want to see how this process goes before handing out any hardware. Trump would presumably not react well to being left off the podium. The World Food Programme The U.N. organization tops Peace Research Institute Oslo’s annual informal Nobel shortlist, with Director Henrik Urdal writing that an award could “highlight the crucial work the organization is doing for populations fleeing from conflict, while also ensuring continued commitment from its funders to keep up their endeavours to make sure victims of conflict, displacement and natural disasters are fed and cared for.” Advertisement Advertisement It’s certainly a timely message, with a catastrophic famine in Yemen and other conflict areas. The award could also highlight the continued relevance of the beleaguered United Nations, which won the prize as a whole in 2000. On the other hand, after awards to the International Atomic Energy Agency (2005), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2013), the committee may want to avoid highlighting yet another U.N.-affiliated agency. SOS Méditerranée, Doctors Without Borders, International Rescue Committee Udval also suggests the award could go a group working to address the Mediterranean refugee crisis, which has claimed more than 1,600 lives this year. SOS and Doctors Without Borders jointly operate the rescue ship Aquarius, which just last week was forced to dock in France after its registration was revoked under political pressure from the Italian government. The IRC has worked to provide medical care and other assistance to refugees on both sides of the Mediterranean. Advertisement Refugee resettlement has become one of the most contentious political issues in Europe amid a rising tide of populism and nativism, and the peace prize could put some of the attention back on the humanitarian stakes of the crisis. Journalists: Reporters Without Borders, Cumhuriyet, Novaya Gazeta, or Raif Badawi It’s been a brutal year for press freedom and the safety of journalists, with lowlights including the killing of three Russian reporters in the Central African Republic, the imprisonment of Reuters reporters in Myanmar, the arrest of prominent blogger Wael Abbas in Egypt, and—just this week—the apparent detention of well-known Saudi columnist Jamal Kashoggi. Almost more discouraging have been attacks on the press from leaders of democratic countries, including Trump’s description of the media as an “enemy of the people.” Advertisement Advertisement The committee could highlight the importance of press freedom and safety by recognizing the leading global advocacy group for journalists, independent publications like Turkey’s Cumhuriyet and Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, or the imprisoned Saudi blogger Badawi. An award for the latter would almost certainly provoke a diplomatic crisis between Norway and Saudi Arabia, which has not reacted well to criticism of its human rights practices lately. Joshua Wong and Hong Kong democracy protesters A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers led by Sen. Marco Rubio nominated Wong and other leaders of the “umbrella” protest movement, which has sought to protect Hong Kong’s democratic institutions from increasing pressure from Beijing. As a teenager, Wong helped organize the 2014 protests that shut down central Hong Kong and was briefly jailed for it earlier this year. Advertisement While a worthy candidate for recognition, Wong and his comrades wouldn’t necessarily benefit from the award. After imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the award in 2010, his wife was placed under house arrest and the Chinese government cracked down even more harshly on his associates. Liu died in custody last year, and his wife was finally allowed to leave China this summer. George Soros Here’s an intriguing one. The controversial financier and philanthropist was nominated by a group of academics from his native Hungary in honor of his support for anti-communist opposition groups in the 1980s and his backing of civil society groups through the Open Society Foundation.<doc-sep>On Friday, the winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced by the Nobel committee in Oslo. The award is given each year to the person or group that has done the most to advance world peace. Last year the winner was the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the 23rd organization (as opposed to individual) to win the prize since its establishment in 1901. This year, there are 331 nominees for the prize, of which 216 are individuals and 115 are groups, according to the Nobel committee. It’s the second-highest number of candidates ever, after the year 2016. The selection process is heavily guarded before Friday’s unveiling and the nominees aren’t made public. But that hasn’t stopped people from guessing who’s in the running. Here is a selection of oddsmakers’ favorites for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize — with the caveat that the committee is very rarely predictable in its choice of laureate: Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in North Korea’s spate of nuclear weapon and missile tests in 2017 left relations between the two Koreas perhaps at their lowest ebb since the Korean War of 1950-53. Now, thanks in part to their leaders, the North’s Kim Jong-un and the South’s Moon Jae-in, the countries have taken tentative steps toward nuclear disarmament. Just last month, Kim pledged to denuclearize under the supervision of foreign inspectors. But the Nobel committee might find it hard to overlook the UN’s assessment that Kim’s regime is also currently committing widespread “crimes against humanity,” including torture, starvation and executions in prison camps. Nevertheless, the pair are the clear favorites for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. President Trump Eighteen Republican lawmakers wrote to the Nobel committee in May to nominate President Trump for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize “in recognition of his work to end the Korean War, denuclearize the Korean peninsula and bring peace to the region.” So, for much the same reason as Moon and Kim are favorites for the prize, Trump is too. U.S. Presidents have received the prize before in office — most recently, Barack Obama in 2009. And few argue with the role Trump played in bringing Kim to the table following a spate of brinkmanship where he threatened to meet the North Korean dictator’s threats against the U.S. with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” The British oddsmaker Ladbrokes is offering odds of 5/2 for him to win, either alone or together with others. Carles Puigdemont The figurehead of last October’s unofficial Catalan independence referendum has effectively been living in exile in Belgium since he fled the country to avoid arrest by Spanish authorities. The vote precipitated a crackdown by Spain that put hopes for an independent Catalonia on ice for the foreseeable future. Puigdemont has been largely out of the news since, though Ladbrokes still puts his chances at 12/1. UNHCR The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.N.’s refugee agency, is at the forefront of efforts to help those fleeing war and persecution around the world. Its efforts have been recognized twice before by the Nobel committee with Peace Prizes in 1954 and 1981. This year, the UNHCR announced that more people were forcibly displaced around the world in 2017 than ever before. Another prize would be timely, at least. Pope Francis No Pope has ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, but Pope Francis has been a favorite for the award ever since assuming the papacy in 2013. That year, he became TIME’s Person of the Year, in recognition of his attempts to shift the church to a more humble and conscientious footing. But 2018, a year where more grim details of clerical abuse emerged, has not been an easy year for the Pope. His handling of sexual abuse scandals in Ireland, the U.S. and Chile was criticized as too slow, damaging his image as a liberal reformist. In 2013, 72% of Americans viewed him ‘favorably,’ according to polling by CNN; in September 2018 that number had fallen to 48%. Even so, Ladbrokes put the odds of him winning at 16/1. Raif Badawi The Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was arrested in 2012 on charges of “insulting Islam through electronic channels,” and sentenced the following year to seven years in jail and 1,000 lashes. He remains imprisoned today, in a nation which new Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is attempting to rebrand as more socially liberal. If he wins, it won’t be the first time a political prisoner has become a Nobel laureate. In 2010, the jailed Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo won. He died of cancer in 2017. ACLU One of the American Civil Liberties Union’s founding members, Jane Addams, was the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize back in 1931. This year, in a case that is still ongoing, the ACLU organized a class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 2,000 children separated at the U.S. border. In response, a federal judge ordered the government to reunite separated children with their families. The family separation controversy followed President Trump for weeks over the summer. The ACLU has placed many other legal hurdles in front of Trump since his inauguration; a bet on them would be a bet on the Nobel committee choosing to snub Trump instead of awarding him a prize he says “everyone thinks” he deserves. The Nobel Peace Prize 2018 is announced on Friday Oct. 5 at 5 a.m. Eastern. Correction: October 4 The original version of this story misstated the name of the figurehead of the unofficial Catalan independence referendum. It is Carles Puigdemont, not Carlos. Get The Brief. Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. Please enter a valid email address. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time.<doc-sep>331 individuals and organisations have been proposed for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize (AFP) Donald Trump? Hardly. Reconciliation between the Koreas? Rather premature. Peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea? Probably missed the deadline. As the 2018 Nobel peace prize looms, it's easier to rule out names than guess who's going to win. This year the field of possibilities facing the five members of the Norwegian committee tasked with awarding the prize was pretty wide, with 331 individuals and organisations proposed for the prestigious prize, which will be announced on Friday in Oslo. And, as usual, despite the fact the list of candidates is a secret, predictions about who might win are gathering pace. With the postponement of this year's Literature Prize for the first time in 70 years over a #MeToo scandal at the Swedish Academy, Friday's peace award has become the most highly anticipated Nobel announcement this year. Looking at the odds on some of the online betting sites, you might think North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in were the front-runners for their efforts at rapprochement between the two nations. But the Nobel experts -- who are more often than not wrong -- are scratching their heads. "On the one hand, the inter-Korean breakthrough is I think the most dramatic thing in this field this year," said Dan Smith, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). "On the other hand I wonder whether it would be premature to be giving the prize on that basis this year." Apart from anything else, Kim's record on human rights hardly stands in his favour. Trump? 'Inappropriate' Could Moon get it on his own? "(He) did well, with the peace-promoting use of the (Winter) Olympic Games" in Pyeongchang, said Peter Wallensteen, a Swedish professor who specialises in international relations. But what of Trump? Certain international figures like Britain's Boris Johnson, when he was foreign minister, and even Moon himself have suggested the US leader could win the prize for his initiatives on the Korean peninsula. At 7-1, the bombastic American president is one of three frontrunners flagged by online bookies Betsson, far ahead of other global figures like France's Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Theresa May and Russia's Vladimir Putin all with odds of 75-1. Such a prize would be "inappropriate," said Smith, pointing to a string of decisions by Trump which "are very negative as far as peace is concerned", most notably withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. And in any case, the only known Trump nomination submitted to the Nobel committee was fake, filed by someone suspected of identity fraud as only certain individuals are allowed to propose names. The nascent reconciliation between Ethiopia and Eritrea has also fuelled hope that a durable peace can be reached between the two neighbouring countries after 20 years of war. For Wallensteen, the peace prize could go to Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed. But he only took power in April with his peace overtures coming to fruition this summer. That is a little late for the Nobel committee, which takes nominations at the start of the year. Fighting Sexual Violence Given the lack of certainty and the limited scope of progress on potentially prize-winning initiatives, some observers are turning to some longer-term contenders. With the #MeToo movement raising global awareness about sexual abuse and harassment, the award could honour those engaged in the fight against sexual violence, such as Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege or Yazidi rape victim Nadia Murad. Nominated many times in the past, Mukwege has spent two decades helping women recover from the violence and trauma of rape in war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, while Murad became an activist after being kidnapped by Islamic State group militants and held as a sex slave. Henrik Urdal, head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (Prio), believes the award could go to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), which feeds millions of starving people every year. From the battlefields of Yemen to the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, "we are seeing now that hunger is becoming again one of the bigger humanitarian challenges of our time," he said. Other potential laureates include the UN refugee agency UNHCR, jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, organisations defending the media such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists (RSF) and Russian human rights champions like the NGO Memorial and opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta. With everything up in the air, the verdict will only be known on Friday at 11:00 am (0900 GMT).<doc-sep>
The winner of this year’s Nobel peace prize is set to be announced on Friday in Oslo, and while the committee does not make the nominees public there has been plenty of speculation over who could win the prestigious award. All that is known is there are 331 nominees – 216 individuals and 115 groups – according to the Nobel committee. The selection process is highly secretive, but here is a list of potential winners based on bookmakers, that includes controversial figures such as Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. Kim Jong-un and South Korean president Moon Jae-in The leaders of the two Koreas restarted talks earlier this year, leading to tensions in the region plummeting to their lowest level in decades, particularly remarkable given the fact that just a year earlier North Korea and Donald Trump were trading threats of war. The two men held three historic summits this year, after a decade of South Korean policy that was hostile to the North. The pair is currently the favourite at Ladbrokes, the British bookmaker, but it remains to be seen if the Norwegian Nobel committee would award the prize to Kim, who runs one of the most oppressive regimes in the world and a network of notoriously harsh gulags. Donald Trump The tweeter-in-chief has repeatedly taken credit for the positive atmosphere on the Korean atmosphere and became the first sitting US president to shake hands with the leader of North Korea when he met Kim in Singapore in June. That followed his decidedly un-peaceful comments last year when he threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on the nuclear-armed state. A group of 18 Republican lawmakers wrote to the Nobel committee in May nominating Trump “in recognition of his work to end the Korean War, denuclearize the Korean peninsula, and bring peace to the region”. Angela Merkel The German chancellor and “Queen of Europe” welcomed hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees into the country in the face of vocal political backlash. She has already been awarded the Saint Francis Lamp for Peace prize this year after she “distinguished herself in the work of reconciliation and the peaceful coexistence among peoples”. Odds put her slightly ahead of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, which aids refugees around the world and has said more people were displaced in 2017 than any other time in the agency’s history. The rest Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor gynaecologist who has campaigned against sexual violence, is another contender for the peace prize. As is Raif Badawi, an imprisoned Saudi blogger, who remains behind bars for “insulting Islam through electronic channels” despite the new king of Saudi Arabia’s attempt to portray himself as a liberalising force. The ACLU, the legal organisation that has been at the forefront of challenging Trump’s policies such as the infamous travel ban or immigrant family separation, is also in the running. Bookmakers have also given good odds to former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium after a failed independence referendum last year. Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are tied at Ladbrokes with odds of 100-1.