Black Lives Matter movement nominated for Nobel peace prize

Norwegian MP Petter Eide praises global effort to ‘fight racial injustice’

The Black Lives Matter movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize following a year in which protests demanding racial justice exploded across the world.  

Norwegian MP Petter Eide said in his nomination papers that the movement had forced countries other than the US to face up to racism within their own societies.  

“I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality,” Mr Eide said, according to The Guardian.  

“Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice.”

BLM was co-founded by three black women in 2013 following the acquittal of the man who shot dead Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.  

It gained wider attention in 2014 following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric garner at the hands of police, before spreading worldwide last year after George Floyd died under the knee of a white officer in Minnesota.  

Despite criticism from the right that BLM protests were often violent, data collated by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project suggested more than 90 per cent of demonstrations involved no serious harm to people or property.

The movement, Mr Eide added, had been “able to mobilise people from all groups of society … in a way which has been different from their predecessors”.

Under Nobel Peace Prize rules, any member of a national parliament can nominate a candidate for the award.  

Following Monday’s deadline to submit nominations, the Nobel committee will draw up a shortlist of candidates before a winner is chosen in October.

Last year’s prize, for which former US president Donald Trump infamously received a nomination, was ultimately won by the United Nations World Food Programme for its efforts combatting hunger across the globe.