The organisation which is overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was announced as winner of the €920,000 prize at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo this morning.

In a statement the Norwegian Nobel Committee explained that disarmament was important to Swede Alfred Nobel, the prize's creator.

"Disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel’s will. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has through numerous prizes underlined the need to do away with nuclear weapons. By means of the present award to the OPCW, the Committee is seeking to contribute to the elimination of chemical weapons."

Pakistani teenager: winning prize "not important"

Malala Yousafzai has received worldwide acclaim for her humanitarian efforts

Malala Yousafzai, a 16-year-old Pakistani girl who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban, had been widely tipped to receive the award.

A Change.org petition calling on the Irish Government to nominate Malala for the award received almost 300,000 signatures.

She had earlier told BBC current affairs programme Panorama that winning the award would be "a great opportunity". However, she also insisted that it was "not important".

"If I win Nobel Peace Prize, it would be a great opportunity for me, but if I don't get it, it's not important because my goal is not to get Nobel Peace Prize, my goal is to get peace and my goal is to see the education of every child," she said.

The teenager is an ambassador for girls' education and has been awarded a range of peace prizes including the Tipperary Peace Award and the revered European Union Sakharov Prize, beating fugitive US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.

Norway's public broadcaster NRK correctly predicted the final result. They were also proven right last year when they reported the award would go to the European Union.

Main image: The OPCW headquarters in the Netherlands