Japanese anti-nuclear weapon group Nihon Hidankyo have been announced as the winners of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
A group dedicated to scrapping nuclear weapons across the world has been named as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2024.
Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo is the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for “its efforts to achieve a world free from nuclear weapons,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee has announced.
The grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is also known as Hibakusha.
The award was announced at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the award was made as the “taboo against the use of nuclear weapon is under pressure.
He said the Nobel committee “wishes to honor all survivors who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace.”
Efforts to eradicate nuclear weapons have been honored in the past by the Nobel committee. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Peace Prize in 2017 and in 1995 Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs won for “their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms.”
The prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1million). Unlike the other Nobel prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed the peace prize be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee.
This year’s prize was awarded against a backdrop of devastating conflicts raging in the world, notably in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan. There had even been rumblings that the committee might choose not to award a Peace Prize at all this year.
Alfred Nobel stated in his will that the prize should be awarded for “the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Since 1901, 104 Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded, mostly to individuals but also to organisations that have been seen to advance peace efforts.
Last year’s prize went to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for her advocacy of women’s rights and democracy, and against the death penalty. The Nobel committee said it also was a recognition of “the hundreds of thousands of people” who demonstrated against “Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women.”
