OSLO: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Japan’s Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors pushing for a nuclear weapons ban.

The group, also known as Hibakusha and founded in 1956, received the honour “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”, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

Nihon Hidankyo’s co-head expressed surprise. “Never did I dream this could happen,” Toshiyuki Mimaki told reporters in Tokyo with tears in his eyes. “It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace,” he said. But “if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there,” he warned.

The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the international “nuclear taboo” that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was “under pressure”.

“This year’s prize is a prize that focuses on the necessity of upholding this nuclear taboo. And we all have a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers,” Frydnes told reporters.

“A nuclear war could destroy our civilisation,” Frydnes warned.

The Nobel committee noted that next year would mark 80 years since the US used two nuclear bombs to kill 214,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Following Friday’s announcement, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called on world leaders to eliminate all nuclear weapons, which he called “devices of death”.

Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2024