The United Nations’ high-profile Palestinian human rights expert, Francesca Albanese, should win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Slovenia’s president told Newsweek, ahead of the announcement that will reveal whether U.S. President Donald Trump has secured the accolade he has long coveted.
Albanese “deserves the Peace Prize this year,” Nataša Pirc Musar, who has served as Slovenia’s president since her election in late 2022, said during an interview in the country’s presidential palace in Ljubljana.
A lawyer by training, like Pirc Musar, Albanese is known for not mincing her words in condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza and for becoming the first U.N. official to be slapped with American sanctions. Albanese has been nominated for this year’s prize, which will be announced on Friday, including by two Northern Irish politicians with the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Slovenian politician Matjaž Nemec.
Trump has for years said he feels he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the world’s best-known awards. The Republican has at once styled himself a “peacemaker-in-chief,” tasked with closing deals to end conflicts across the globe, while authorizing a U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean and multiple lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in international waters this month. Observers raised serious questions about the legality of the missile strikes.
The U.S. government sanctioned Albanese back in July, in what Secretary of State Marco Rubio said was a response to “biased and malicious activities” that made Albanese “unfit for service” as special rapporteur. Rubio accused Albanese of “unabashed antisemitism,” supporting terrorism and holding “open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.”
“The powerful punishing those who speak for the powerless, it is not a sign of strength, but of guilt,” Albanese said in a statement, reacting to the sanctions. U.N. human rights experts called the sanctions “a direct attack on the integrity of the UN human rights system.”
“It’s very serious to be on the list of the people sanctioned by the U.S.,” Albanese told the Associated Press. “It’s going to harm me.”
Albanese is “opening our eyes,” said Pirc Musar, a human rights advocate who previously represented U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, who was born in Slovenia. “She has all the facts – a lot of information – and she’s very vocal about it, and I think the Peace Prize should be given not just to somebody who stops the wars, but to a person who knows what’s at stake; humanity, dignity, respecting of international law.”
“And that’s all what Francesca Albanese is doing,” Pirc Musar said. “That’s why she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Albanese has repeatedly called for an end to the war in Gaza and accused Israel of committing genocide in the devastated enclave. U.N. experts said last month Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which Israel’s Foreign Ministry described as “fake” and relying “entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others.” A U.N.-backed body officially declared famine in Gaza in August, which Israel said was a “deeply flawed” assessment.
The U.K., along with France, Canada and several other countries, recognized a Palestinian state last month as international condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza grew.
Israel launched its war in Gaza after Palestinian militant group Hamas orchestrated the October 7 attacks in 2023 that killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 more taken as hostages into Gaza. Israel says it believes about 20 hostages of a total 48 remaining are still alive.
Israel then launched its war on the strip, which has been devastated by fierce bombardment and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ground operations. Hamas health authorities in Gaza say more than 67,000 people have been killed in the strip since October 7, 2023. This figure does not distinguish between combatants and civilians and is disputed by Israeli officials, but is widely cited by Western sources.
Trump said on Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had agreed to the first part of the 20-point peace plan that the president publicly presented alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late September. Fresh, indirect negotiations had taken place in Egypt. Trump said all the hostages held in Gaza would be returned under the deal.
The announcement was greeted with jubilation and some caution, with many of the fine-print details still murky. The Guardian reported, however, that the Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Thursday that it had already reached a decision on the winner of the 2025 peace prize laureate on Monday, which was several days before the ceasefire was agreed upon under the U.S. president’s Gaza plan.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the agreement “would not have happened without President Trump’s leadership” when asked during a press conference on Thursday whether the Republican deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
Pirc Musar, speaking ahead of the announcement of a first-phase agreement in Gaza on Wednesday, added: “If he’s [Trump’s] going to stop the war in Ukraine, and in Palestine, then I’ll think about it – whether to change to mind.”
Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee and is a member of Zelensky’s party, told Newsweek in June he was withdrawing his nomination of Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize because he had “lost any sort of faith and belief” the Republican could secure peace in eastern Europe.
Trump had pledged to end the war in Ukraine in just 24 hours. But there is little hope for a quick end to the conflict, more than three and a half years after the current phase was sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. Ukraine agreed to a U.S. ceasefire proposal in March, but the White House has been reluctant to force Moscow to move on its demands.
Trump has brokered “on average about one peace deal or ceasefire per month” in his first six months in office, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the end of July. “It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Trump has publicly declared he has “ended” six or seven wars. The administration said the Republican has settled conflicts between Israel and Iran, Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Serbia and Kosovo and Egypt and Ethiopia. The White House said in early August that he had “finally succeeded in making peace” between Armenia and Azerbaijan after the two countries signed a peace declaration and economic agreements in Washington.