Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Colombia Senator Piedad Cordoba and Afghanistan’s Sima Samar, two women promoting peace and human rights in conflict zones, are among the top contenders for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo said.

There are a record 205 nominees for the 10 million-krona ($1.4 million) prize, which women rarely win, set to be announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Oct. 9. U.S. scientists Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak were awarded the Nobel medicine prize today, the first of six prizes to be announced through Oct. 12.

Cordoba, 54, “is the most likely candidate,” said Kristian Berg Harpviken, head of the institute which each year lists potential winners. “She has been able to carve out an independent space for herself in a conflict that’s very protracted. Samar certainly has a very strong personality and played a major role in the Afghan context.”

The prize, along with other honors for literature, physics, medicine and chemistry, was created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his will and first awarded in 1901. Finland’s Martti Ahtisaari won last year and past laureates include Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Theresa. Kenya’s Wangari Maathai was the most recent female winner in 2004.

Samar, 52, head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, is the institute’s third pick after interfaith advocate and Jordanian royal family member Ghazi bin Muhammad, a professor of Philosophy of Islamic Faith at Jordan University. Samar and Cordoba are favored at bookmaker Paddy Power Plc at 4/1 and 6/1, respectively. Bin Muhammad is at 7/1.

FARC Guerilla

Cordoba, a senator for the opposition Liberal Party, leads Colombians for Peace, an initiative for a negotiated solution to the conflict between the government and the FARC guerilla, which was founded in 1964 as a peasant-based, Marxist group. FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, has taken a battering since 2002 when President Alvaro Uribe took office and its ranks of jungle fighters and urban rebels have been whittled in half as his military offensive, hunger and disillusionment encouraged as many as 11,200 members to desert.

Samar, a medical doctor, formed Shuhada, a group focused on health care to mainly Afghan women and also serves as the UN special rapporteur to Sudan. After more than a decade in exile, she returned to Afghanistan in 2002 for a cabinet post in the Afghan Transitional Administration led by Hamid Karzai, according to her Web site. Samar was Deputy President and then Women’s Affair Minister before she resigned because of death threats.

The five-member Nobel Committee in Oslo consists of four women and is headed by Thorbjoern Jagland, who was president of Norway’s parliament before being named secretary general of the Council of Europe on Oct. 1.

Few Women

“Issues of gender, identity and regional representation will play into the considerations,” Berg Harpviken said. “There’ve been rather few female candidates on the long list of Noble Peace Prize laureates.”

The institute correctly guessed former Vice President Al Gore as a winner in 2007, and earlier in the decade had the International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei, who won in 2005, and Ahtisaari, as potential candidates.

In the prize’s history, 12 winners have been women and 84 men. Organizations have also been honored, including the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1917, 1944 and 1963. Some years no prize was awarded.

While nominations are kept secret, some are revealed by the nominators, which include former laureates and selected academics and politicians. Of the 205 nominees this year, 33 are organizations and the rest individuals, according to Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

Cordoba, who has negotiated the release of hostages, was nominated by Adolfo Perez Esquivel, a 1980 laureate and Argentine human rights activist, according to Oslo’s peace institute.

Chinese Winner

One of last year’s favorites, Chinese environment and AIDS activist Hu Jia is unlikely to win because two of the Nobel committee’s members this year were also members of the Norwegian parliament, according to Berg Harpviken. Awarding Hu may increase tensions with the world’s most populous nation, which on Oct. 1 celebrated the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China following the civil-war victory of Mao Zedong.

Hu’s odds are 8/1, the same as Zimbabwe’s Morgan Tsvangirai, and followed by Thich Quang Do, a Vietnamese democracy activist and Buddhist monk, at 10/1, at Paddy Power.

“There were no obvious candidates that stand out this year,” Nils Butenschoen, director for Norway’s Center for Human Rights, said by phone. The China anniversary has been cited as a reason for awarding a prize “but I’m not convinced that it’s important enough for the Committee. We’ve seen that the Committee takes ongoing peace processes, diplomatic processes into consideration when it has wished to have an impact.”

Candidates

Other possible candidates include Lidia Yusupova, a Russian lawyer and campaigner for Chechen war victims; the Cluster Munition Coalition, an alliance of groups against such weapons; Bulambo Lembelembe Josue, a Congolese pastor who won the Norwegian Rafto award last year, given for promoting intellectual, political and economic freedom; and the European Union.

Prizes for literature, chemistry, medicine and physics, are picked by the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation. The prize for physics will be announced on Oct. 6, the chemistry honor on Oct. 7 and the literature prize on Oct. 8. The Nobel for economics, instituted by the Swedish central bank in 1968, will be announced on Oct. 12.

To contact the reporter on this story: Meera Bhatia in Oslo at mbhatia2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 5, 2009 05:58 EDT