Sixteen-year-old Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for Climate Activism

Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who inspired thousands of students across the globe to take part in the Global Climate Strike earlier this month, has been nominated by three Norwegian MPs for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Thunberg began staging school strikes for climate change in front of the Swedish parliament in August. Since then she has continued to gain international attention, especially after speaking at the UN Climate Talks in Poland in December and at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.

“We have proposed Greta Thunberg because if we do nothing to halt climate change, it will be the cause of wars, conflict, and refugees,” Norwegian Socialist MP Freddy Andre Ovstegard told AFP news agency, BBC reported. “Greta Thunberg has launched a mass movement which I see as a major contribution to peace.”

Thunberg has since been nominated for the newly-founded Prix Liberté, a freedom prize in the region of Normandy in northern France. She is nominated alongside Saudi blogger and dissident Raif Badawi and photojournalist Lu Guang, The Local reported. According to a release from the Normandy region website, “the Freedom Prize gives young people all over the world the opportunity to choose an exemplary public figure or organization, committed to the fight for freedom. Just like those who risked their lives when they landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944.”