If Barack Obama can be given a peace prize, why not Edward Snowden! It seems the public support for whistle-blower Edward Snowden has been growing over the year. As in total, eight public nominations have been made for the whistleblower Edward Snowden for 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. The list comprises of prominent politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals and faculties of renowned institutes.

According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, a nomination is considered valid if it is submitted by members of national assemblies and governments of states, members of international courts, university rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes, persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, among others.

Will Snowden make it to the list of Nobel Peace nominations? If this is the question coming to the mind, then looking at the public nominations, there is no doubt, but then again, the Nobel committee does have a mind of its own.

Here are the eight nominations made in favor of Edward Snowden:

The first nomination in favor of Snowden was made by Stefan Svallfors, a professor from the Umeå University in Sweden on 13 July, 2013. He announced that he had made a formal nomination electing Edward Snowden for Noble Peace prize. In his letter, he stated that Edward Snowden has made “heroic contribution” to the society at a great "personal cost." In the letter Professor Svallfors also urged the nomination committee that the decision to select Snowden would restore the faith of the people and help rebuilt its reputation that took a setback following the nomination of Barack Obama for Nobel peace in 2009.

Twitter post by Professor Stefan Svallfors

  Soon after this, it was widely reported in the Swedish newspaper Ystads Allehanda that Marcello Vittorio Ferrada-Noli, also known in Italy as Ferrada de Noli, a Swedish - Chilean medicine doctor and Professor Emeritus of Public Health Sciences also nominated the Edward Snowden for a Nobel Peace Prize. The news report that was published on 17 July 2013 reported that Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli nominated Edward Snowden in a joint nomination with Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.

Following this, earlier on 29 January 2014 the Norwegian parliamentarians Snorre Valen and Baard Vegar Solhjell, a former government minister also filed a nomination for Edward Snowden. The two parliamentarians stated that “The public debate and changes in policy that have followed in the wake of Snowden’s whistleblowing have contributed to a more stable and peaceful world order.”

Edward Snowden was then nominated by the Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Chairperson for the Icelandic Pirate Party. On 31 January 2014, she published a nomination letter signed by herself and the two other Pirate Party members of the Icelandic Parliament (Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson and Jón Þór Ólafsson) and the two Swedish Pirate Party Members of the European Parliament (Amelia Andersdotter and Christian Engström).

On the final day of the Nobel Peace prize nominations on 31 January, the Green / European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament announced that Edward Snowden was their nomination for the Prize.

The 64-member left group in the German Bundestag, the lower house of German Parliament, also has nominated Edward Snowden for Nobel peace prize on the same day.

The Brazilian Senator Vanessa Grazziotin, who heads the Senate panel investigating U.S. espionage in Brazil nominating Snowden for Nobel, said revelations had contributed to a more “stable and peaceful world” because when governments “work secretly against citizens and states, global peace and stability are more difficult to achieve.” The report was published in AP on 04 February.

The head of Stockholm University’s Department of Computer and Systems Sciences Professor Love Ekenberg on 5 February nominated Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The five-member Nobel Peace Prize panel will not confirm the names that have been chosen or rejected from the list of nomination. The final Nobel Peace prize list is shortlisted by the committee by March.