Nobel Peace Prize 2024 awarded to Japanese NGO Nihon Hidankyo for efforts towards ‘a world free of nuclear weapons’

Nobel Peace Prize 2024: The NGO received the award 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", as stated by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in its citation.

By: Express Web Desk

Updated: October 11, 2024 05:04 PM IST

2 min read

The 2024 Nobel Prize for Peace has been awarded to Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo 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”, as stated by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in its citation.

“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,” the committee noted further.

Nihon Hidankyo is a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, which arose in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945.

Amid widespread conflict across the globe, the Norwegian Nobel Committee asserted that the award signifies upholding of a norm known as “the nuclear taboo”. “At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen,” the Nobel committee wrote in its press release.

Last year, Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”

Unlike the Peace Prize, Nobel prizes in the fields of Medicine, Physics and Chemistry are awarded many years after the scientists’ work has been published to effectively gauge the impact of the research work. That the Peace Prize has sometimes been awarded to politicians and world leaders much sooner in comparison has become a point of criticism.

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