ANTI-NUKE GROUP, INSPIRED BY MALAYSIAN, WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
Anti-nuclear arms campaign started by physician wins 2017 Nobel Peace Prize
NOT even in his dreams had Datuk Dr Ronald McCoy thought that he would one day be a recipient of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.
Recalling how it all began, the 87-year-old said the failure to reach a consensus on the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review in 2005 drove him to come out with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
“I emailed my friends in the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) about the campaign.
“All of them were very keen about the idea,” he said when contacted by the New Straits Times yesterday.
McCoy said he got the idea for the campaign from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which later led to the Ottawa Landmine Treaty in 1997.
“Many non-nuclear states began to realise that nuclear weapons also had a humanitarian impact.
“We convinced other countries that the only way to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe was by eliminating nuclear weapons.
“And the only way we can protect the world from a nuclear war is by getting rid of nuclear weapons.”
ICAN kicked off in Melbourne, Australia and was officially launched in 2007 in Vienna, Austria.
McCoy, a former co-president of IPPNW, said 468 non-governmental organisations from more than 100 countries had participated in ICAN.
Last Friday, 10 years after ICAN was launched, the campaign became the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
In its official website www.nobelprize.org, the Nobel committee said it had given the award to ICAN “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”.
“Of course, it is such an honour for us,” said McCoy.
“Many people congratulated me on the matter, because I had proposed the idea.
“But, this award is for the whole organisation, because we worked so hard for ICAN.”
ICAN was the force behind the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by the United Nations on July 7.
The Treaty was hailed as a significant milestone in the seven-decade effort to prevent a nuclear war since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 during World War 2.
“We cannot help feeling proud about it,” he said.
He was quoted as saying in a recent interview with Malay Mail Online that nuclear arms were not weapons of war, but weapons that would wreak “total global destruction”.
“Should India and Pakistan engage in a nuclear war, the impact would not be limited to South Asia. There will be swift destruction and the soot from these explosions will go into the atmosphere, block out the sun.
“We would have what is called a nuclear winter. All the crops will perish and we will die of starvation.”
More than 50 countries have since signed the Treaty, including Malaysia.
The prize presentation ceremony for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize will be held in Oslo, Norway on Dec 10.