Petition for Gisele Pelicot to win Nobel Peace Prize passes 125,000 signatures

A UK-based petition calling for Gisele Pelicot to receive the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has received more than 125,000 signatures.

Ms Pelicot, 72, a retired logistics manager, was drugged by her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, to render her unconscious, and then raped by him and dozens of other men, between 2011 and 2020.

Fifty men were found guilty of rape or sexual offences after a three-and-a-half-month trial in Avignon, France, which concluded in December.

The court found Pelicot guilty of rape and all other charges against him.

Ms Pelicot, who waived her right to anonymity as a survivor, said that shame should fall on her abusers, not her.

Catherine Mayer, 63, from London, a veteran journalist and co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party, started a petition to urge the Nobel Committee to recognise Ms Pelicot with one of the world’s most prestigious honours.

“One of the things in my own activism I’ve tried very much to convey is that violence against women and girls is a war,” she told the PA news agency.

“It’s just not recognised as such because it has been so normalised in daily life.

“I thought that Gisele Pelicot, in her extraordinarily brave decision to testify and to waive anonymity, managed to put a face on what it looks like to be on the receiving end of this relentless sexual violence.”

Ms Pelicot was named by the Financial Times as one of the 25 most influential women of 2024, and featured in the BBC’s 100 Women list the same year.

Ms Mayer said Ms Pelicot’s “viscerally hideous” case was a “teaching moment” for the world.

“Women who are raped or sexually assaulted are very often accused of being complicit in their own fate, and this is a woman who had no idea what was happening to her, who was drugged, who cannot have consented,” she said.

“Nobody deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than Pelicot.”

Nominations for the peace prize can be submitted to the Nobel Committee by MPs and ministers, university professors, previous award winners, and a handful of international organisations.

Ms Mayer will now be urging public figures who are eligible to make nominations to put Ms Pelicot’s name forward.

The Change.org petition, which started on December 20 2024, has gained more than 129,000 signatures.

“Every single person who signs is understanding that wider context of sexual violence, violence against women and girls, being a war, and Gisele Pelicot being somebody who shows us the possibility of peace,” said Ms Mayer.