ICAN, ANTI-NUKE CAMPAIGNER, WINS PEACE NOBEL
ICAN pushing for global treaty to ban nuclear bombs
Oslo, Oct 6: The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to the Genevabased International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an organisation seeking to eliminate atomic weapons through an international treaty.
The prize sent a message that it is unacceptable behaviour... we can’t threaten to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of security,” ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn said.
Oslo, Oct. 6: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an organisation seeking to eliminate atomic weapons through an international treatybased prohibition.
The Geneva-based ICAN won the $1.1 million prize because it “has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world’s nations to pledge to cooperate ... in efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons,” Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit ReissAndersen said in the announcement.
The prize “sends a message to all nuclear-armed states and all states that continue to rely on nuclear weapons for security that it is unacceptable behaviour. We will not support it, we will not make excuses for it, we can’t threaten to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of security. That’s not how you build security,” ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn told reporters in Geneva.
“We are trying to send very strong signals to all states with nuclear arms, nuclear-armed states, North Korea, US, Russia, China, France, UK, Israel, all of them, India, Pakistan, it is unacceptable to threaten to kill civilians,” she said.
The prize comes amid heightened tensions over both North Korea’s aggressive development of nuclear weapons and President Donald Trump’s persistent criticism of the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme.
ICAN has campaigned actively for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted by 122 countries at the United Nations in July. On September 20, the first day the treaty was open for signature, 51 countries signed it and three submitted their ratifications. The treaty needs 50 ratifications to go into force, which advocates are confident will happen.
ICAN also organised events globally in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing.
The prize committee wanted “to send a signal to North Korea and the US that they need to go into negotiations,” Oeivind Stenersen, a historian of the peace prize, said, adding: “The prize is also coded support to the Iran nuclear deal.
—