Nobel Peace Prize
Annual award, given in Oslo, recognising work advancing peace, human rights or humanitarian causes.
Denis Mukwege, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, stays linked to current events through Panzi Hospital, which logged an 85% rise in recorded sexual-violence survivors for the first half of 2026, figures published 30 July.
Last refreshed: 31 July 2026
Why did Denis Mukwege win the Nobel Peace Prize?
Timeline for Nobel Peace Prize
Mentioned in: Panzi logs 646 survivors in six months
Pandemics and BiosecurityBackground
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually in Oslo by the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals or organisations judged to have done the most to advance peace, human rights or humanitarian causes; laureates since 1901 have included statesmen, human-rights defenders, humanitarian organisations and medical pioneers.
The Committee operates independently of the Norwegian government and of Sweden's Nobel Foundation, and its choices, unlike the Stockholm-awarded prizes for Science and literature, regularly draw both praise and controversy over how directly a laureate's work maps onto the prize's peace mandate.
Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege is one such laureate, sharing the 2018 prize for treating survivors of wartime sexual violence at Panzi Hospital; the hospital's latest figures, published 30 July 2026, put the survivor count for the first half of the year at 646, a rise of 85% on 2025, a live reminder of the conflict that first brought his work to the Committee's attention .