The Black Lives Matter movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize for the way its call for systemic change has spread around the world.
Expressing gratification over the nomination, the Black Lives Matter in a tweet said: “We hold the largest social movement in global history. Today, we have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. People are waking up to our global call: for racial justice and an end to economic injustice, environmental racism, and white supremacy. We’re only getting started.”
We hold the largest social movement in global history. Today, we have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. People are waking up to our global call: for racial justice and an end to economic injustice, environmental racism, and white supremacy. We’re only getting started ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/xjestPNFzC
— Black Lives Matter (@Blklivesmatter) January 30, 2021
Norwegian MP Petter Eide in his nomination papers said the Black Lives Matter movement had forced countries outside the United States to grapple with 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. Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice,” The Guardian quoted Eide as saying.
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The Norwegian MP, who has previously nominated human rights activists from Russia and China for the prize, said Black Lives Matter “have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice”.
“They have been able to mobilise people from all groups of society, not just African-Americans, not just oppressed people, it has been a broad movement, in a way which has been different from their predecessors,” he added.
Black Lives Matter is a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people.
In July 2013, the movement began with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin 17 months earlier in February 2012.
The movement became nationally recognized for street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African Americans, resulting in protests and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, a city near St. Louis and Eric Garner in New York City.
