By Adedapo Adesanya
The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Mr Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the award was made as the “taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure.”
He said the Nobel committee “wishes to honour all survivors who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace.”
“In response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945, a global movement arose whose members have worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weapons,” he said.
“Gradually, a powerful international norm developed, stigmatising the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. This norm has been known as the nuclear taboo,” he added.
The committee reminded that next year will mark 80 years since two atomic bombs made by the United States killed an estimated 120,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In response, Mr Toshiyuki Mimaki of Nihon Hidankyo says that the group’s win of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize would greatly boost its efforts to demonstrate that the abolition of nuclear weapons was possible.
“It would be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons can be achieved,” Mimaki told a news conference in Hiroshima, the site of the August 6, 1945 atomic bombing during World War II.
“Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished,” he said.
The Nobel prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish Kronor ($1 million).
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.
The Nobel season ends on Monday (October 14) with the announcement of the winner of the Economics Prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Modupe Gbadeyanka