The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In its citation on Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said the group was recognised “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”.
Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said the award comes as the “taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure”.
He added that the 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."
Frydnes warned nuclear nations against using such weapons, without naming specific countries.
"Today's nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power. They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically," Frydnes said. "A nuclear war could destroy our civilisation."
This isn't the first time anti-nuclear efforts have been recognised. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won in 2017, while in 1995 the prize went to Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences "for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms."
This year’s prize was announced against a backdrop of ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan.
At a media conference in Tokyo, the co-head of Nihon Hidankyo compared the situation for children in Gaza to that of the situation in Japan at the end of the second world war.
“In Gaza, children in blood are being held. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” Toshiyuki Mimaki told a news conference in Tokyo, according to AFP.
The award recognises Nihon Hidankyo’s efforts to promote peace and abolish nuclear arms. It comes at a time of heightened global tensions and nuclear threats.
Last year’s prize went to Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for her human rights work.
The Nobel Peace Prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (£820,000). It is the only Nobel prize decided in Oslo rather than Stokholm.
The Nobel season ends on Monday 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.
