(Bloomberg) — A Japanese grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024.
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The organization, Nihon Hidankyo, receives the prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement Friday.
Next year will mark 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed an estimated 120,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Survivors of the calamity, who are known as the Hibakusha, came together to form the grassroots movement for raising awareness of the disastrous consequences of nuclear weapons on human life.
“The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the Hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo,” the committee said. “It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure.”
The organization will receive an 11 million-krona ($1.1 million) award. The committee hasn’t been in touch with the laureates yet, head of the committee Jorgen Watne Frydnes said.
The award represents “an indirect critique” of the nuclear threats made by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his regime, as well as that of Iran, said Asle Sveen, a researcher who has retired from the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
Nihon Hidankyo has provided thousands of witness accounts, issued resolutions and public appeals, and sent annual delegations to the United Nations and a variety of peace conferences to remind the world of the pressing need for nuclear disarmament.
A previous laureate working against nuclear weapons is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of non-governmental organizations in 100 countries, which received the accolade in 2017.
The committee received 286 nominations for this year’s prize, out of which 197 were individuals and the rest organizations. Their names are kept secret for 50 years.
Last year’s laureate is jailed Iranian human-rights activist Narges Mohammadi who has fought against the oppression of women in Iran. In recent years, other human-rights advocates to be acclaimed with a Nobel include Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian organization Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, as well as Liu Xiaobo from China.
The Red Cross has been awarded three times, and other previous laureates include Barack Obama, Martin Luther King and the European Union.
Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.
–With assistance from Stephen Treloar, Christopher Jungstedt and Alastair Reed.
(Updates with details from first paragraph)
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