Two journalists have been named as joint winners of 2021’s Nobel Peace Prize.

They are Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov. The pair were chosen as joint winners for their fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia.

The joint winners were announced late on Friday night (NZ time) by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

The award is intended to honour an individual or organisation that has “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations”.

Last year’s prize went to the World Food Programme, which was established in 1961 at the behest of US President Dwight Eisenhower to fight hunger around the globe. The Rome-based UN agency was lauded for seeking to end starvation as “a weapon of war and conflict”.

The prestigious award is accompanied by a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (NZ$1.64 million). The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize in physiology or medicine to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch.

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to three scientists whose work found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change.

Benjamin List and David W C MacMillan were named as laureates of the Nobel Prize for chemistry Wednesday for finding an easier and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make compounds, including medicines and pesticides.

The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded Thursday to UK-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was recognised for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee”.