Although former US President Donald Trump tagged them as “a symbol of hate,” the Black Lives Matter foundation has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize for the way its call for civil disobedience against police brutality and racial violence has spread around the globe.

In his nomination papers, the Norwegian MP Petter Eide said the movement which had its epicentre in the United States awakened countries across the globe and gave rise to a lot of conversations around racism. 

“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,” Eide said, the Guardian reported. “Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice.

“They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice.”

ALSO READ | Two of three police officers at Jacob Blake shooting return to duty

Talking about the universality of the BLM movement, Eide said, “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.”

The 61-year-old politician, who has represented the Socialist Left party in parliament since 2017,  concluded his nomination saying: “Awarding the peace prize to Black Lives Matter, as the strongest global force against racial injustice, will send a powerful message that peace is founded on equality, solidarity and human rights, and that all countries must respect those basic principles.”

The Black Lives Matter foundation came into existence in 2013 and following several headline-grabbing cases of police brutality against African-Americans, it became an international slogan.

ALSO READ | Gymnast Nia Dennis goes viral for her ‘black excellence’ dance routine. Watch

Protests that followed the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others saw chapters of Black Lives Matter spread across the US and around the world.

Earlier in the day, the Black Lives Matter foundation won Sweden’s Olof Palme human rights prize for 2020, BBC reported.

The prize organisers said that the global reach of BLM movement “illustrates that racism and racist violence is not just a problem in American society, but a global problem.”

They said the foundation had “in a unique way exposed the hardship, pain, and wrath of the African-American minority at not being valued equal to people of a different colour.”

An online prize-giving ceremony will take place in Stockholm on Saturday.

The $100,000 (£73,000) annual prize commemorates the Swedish prime minister and prominent human rights advocate Olof Palme, who was assassinated in Stockholm in 1986.