9.02am BST

Good morning and welcome to live coverage of the Nobel peace prize 2012. The five members of the peace prize committee will unveil their

decision in Oslo at 10am BST.

Who will join the illustrious list of winners that includes Nelson Mandela (jointly with Frederik Willem de Klerk), Aung San Suu Kyi,Médecins Sans Frontières, Mother Teresa ....and, er, Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger?

There is frenzied speculation that this year’s award could be given to bloggers from the Arab Spring, Russian rights activists or even to Julian Assange, currently holed up in an embassy in Knightsbridge.

This year, the bookies’ favourite (often not a reliable guide) for the Nobel prize is Gene Sharp, one of the world’s leading theorists of non-violence and an emeritus professor at the University of Massachusetts, (Paddy Power has him at 6-4). Sharp is credited with inspiring protests across the globe, from Cairo to Beijing, although some Egyptian dissidents were scornful of Sharp's influence. Two other activists prominent

during the Arab Spring are also tipped – 29-year-old Tunisian blogger

Lina Ben Mhenni and the celebrated Egyptian internet activist Wael

Ghonim (both were also nominated last year).

Sima Samar, chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and a campaigner for woman's rights, is second favourite with Paddy Power. She has already been honoured with the Right Livliehood award, known as the “alternative Nobel prize”.

The most politically brave choice, however, would be to give the prize to campaigners from eastern Europe. Since his return to the Kremlin in May, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has enacted a series of repressive new measures in response to growing anti-government protests. He has expelled USAID and demanded that western-funded Russian non-governmental organisations brand themselves as “foreign agents” - a move straight from the KGB’s playbook.

One activist widely mentioned in this context is Svetlana Gannushkina and her indefatigable Moscow-based human rights organisation Memorial (20-1 with Paddy Power). Another is Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the 85-year-old doyenne of Russia’s human rights scene, and chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group. Alexeyeva is one of the few survivors of the Soviet dissident movement, and is a veteran enemy of authoritarian government during the communist era and today.

Another contender is Ales Belyatsky, an activist from Belarus. Belyatsky was arrested in August 2011 and jailed after a show trial condemned as “political” by the European Union. Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko are likely to react badly if the Nobel prize is given to their own activists and regard it as unacceptable western meddling.

Following his nomination in 2011, the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is also on the list – and tipped by the bookies at 16/1. It seems improbable, however, the peace prize committee will give him the award at a time when he is fighting rape allegations and extradition to Stockholm. Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since early summer. He would have to get past the two policemen waiting on the doorstep to arrest him on to collect his prize.

There are several r̶i̶d̶i̶c̶u̶l̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶ long-shot suggestions also on the bookies’ list including Facebook (33/1), the European Union (40/1) and Bono (100/1). Other more credible names doing the rounds in Oslo include the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, ho has apparently been nominated every year since 1990, when he presided over the reunification of Germany, is 20-1 but now in poor health; the Mexican bishop Jose Raul Lopez, Cuban dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, and the instigators of the Burma reform process.