The free world gives thumbs-up for the Committee in charge of considering nominees for the Nobel Peace prize. For once, in a very long while, the 2017 Prize is believed to have gone to actual peace seekers in the globe. It is cheery news that the nuclear disarmament group, known as the International Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, has won the Nobel Peace Prize for its decade-long campaign to rid the world of the atomic bomb as nuclear-fuelled crises swirl over North Korea and Iran.
More than 70 years since atomic bombs were used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nobel committee sought to highlight ICAN’s tireless efforts and to encourage the allied groups to continue with their work.
The decision should also send a strong message to US President Donald Trump, who has threatened to dump a 2015 deal curbing Iran’s nuclear program and who last month alarmed delegates at the UN General Assembly by warning he may be forced to “totally destroy” North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
According to the Norwegian Nobel committee President, Berit Reiss-Andersen, who announced the prize in Oslo, ICAN “is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.” She declared “We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time”.
Founded in Vienna in 2007 on the fringes of an international conference on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, ICAN has mobilised campaigners and celebrities alike in its cause.
It was a key player in the adoption of a historic nuclear weapons ban treaty, signed by 122 countries in July. However, the accord was largely symbolic as none of the nine known world nuclear powers signed up to it.
ICAN has said it is honored to have been awarded the prize. “This prize is a tribute to the tireless efforts of many millions of campaigners and concerned citizens worldwide who, ever since the dawn of the atomic age, have loudly protested nuclear weapons, insisting that they can serve no legitimate purpose and must be forever banished from the face of our earth,” it said in a statement.
The coalition of hundreds of NGOs says its main objective is the adoption of an international treaty banning nuclear weapons, along the lines of earlier agreements forbidding the use of biological and chemical weapons, landmines and cluster munitions.”A global ban on nuclear weapons is long overdue,” the organisation says on its website. Despite the latest success, ICAN is not resting on its laurels.”We’re not done yet… The job isn’t done until nuclear weapons are gone,” ICAN Chief, Beatrice Fihn, told reporters in Oslo, this week.
Its high-profile supporters include former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu and singer and artist Yoko Ono.”I can imagine a world without nuclear weapons, and I support ICAN,” reads a message from the Dalai Lama on the site. Actor and activist, Martin Sheen, meanwhile suggests that “if Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr were alive today, they would be part of ICAN.”
The Nobel Peace prize – the climax for the week-long awards honouring the world’s leading lights in fields such as Physics, Medicine and English Literature — comes as another non-proliferation deal, Iran’s 2015 accord with world powers, is under increasing pressure from the US President, Donald Trump.
The US leader has threatened to discard the Iran nuclear agreement altogether, pointing out that Tehran is developing missiles that may be used to deliver a nuclear warhead when the deal’s restrictions are lifted in 2025.
He is due to report to Congress next week on whether Iran is still complying with the deal and whether it remains in US interests to stick to it.
Tensions between the US and North Korea, which has test-fired two missiles over Japan and conducted a string of apparent underground nuclear tests this year, have raised the risk of a nuclear confrontation to its highest level in decades.”This year’s Peace Prize is also a call upon these states to initiate serious negotiations with a view to the gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of the almost 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world,” said Reiss-Andersen.
More than 300 people and organisations were believed to have been nominated for this year’s Peace Prize, including Pope Francis, President Donald Trump, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the UN refugee agency UNHCR, Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, the Syrian volunteer organization known as the White Helmets, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif along with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini for their work on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
The Peace Prize, which comes with a golden medal and a cheque for nine million Swedish kronor (943,000 euros or $1.1 million) will be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of its founder, Swedish businessman and philanthropist, Alfred Nobel.
