Norway MP nominates UNRWA for Nobel Peace Prize

A Norwegian MP announced on Thursday the nomination of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for the Nobel Peace Prize, while Israel accuses 12 of its employees of being involved in the 7 October attack.

Labour MP, Asmund Aukrust, told Dagbladet newspaper that he nominated UNRWA “for its long-term work in providing vital support to Palestine and the region as a whole”.

The elected MP, who also serves as deputy Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament, added: “This work has been crucial for over 70 years and even more vital in the last three months.”

There has been controversy surrounding UNRWA since Israel accused 12 of its employees, out of a total of 30,000, of being involved in the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.

As a result, 12 countries, some of them major donors, such as the United States, Germany, Britain and Sweden, announced that they would suspend their funding for the Agency, which said, on Thursday, that it was threatened with having to halt its activities “by the end of February”.

On its part, Norway announced that it would not suspend its funding for UNRWA.

The nomination for the Peace Prize is not a form of recognition from the Nobel Committee, which receives hundreds of nominations annually.

READ: UN experts condemn any efforts to delegitimise UN agency for Palestinian refugees as a whole