And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to ... anti-nuke group
Nobel officials honor activists behind U.N. weapons ban treaty
Activists for an international group recognized for work to foster global ban on the destructive weapons.
With the threat of a nuclear conflict in the near future growing ever more real, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to a coalition of disarmament activists that lobbied for a treaty to ban atomic arms.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was honored for its work to foster a global ban on the destructive weapons, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.
The scrappy civil-society movement was behind a successful push this summer for a U.N. treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons. It promotes nuclear disarmament around the world.
The award comes amid rising global alarm about a potential nuclear conflagration. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has hurled threats of nuclear missile strikes against the United States, and President Donald Trump has warned he could “totally destroy North Korea” if provoked. The barbed exchanges have raised fears among many global leaders of a miscalculation that could end in cataclysmic conflict.
Separately, Trump is reported to be planning next week to “decertify” Iran’s compliance with an international agreement that limits its nuclear program, a step European allies worry could lead to nuclear proliferation.
“The risk of nuclear war has grown exceptionally in the last few years, and that’s why it makes this treaty and us receiving this award so important,” Beatrice Fihn, the Swedish executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, said in an interview. “We do not have to accept this (risk). We do not have to live with the kind of fear that Donald Trump could start a nuclear war that would destroy all of us. We should not base our security on whether or not his finger is on the trigger.”
ICAN recognizes that nuclear weapons will not disappear soon. But Fihn said a ban is still a realistic goal, similar to the way an international taboo was created around the use of chemical weapons.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was approved by twothirds of U.N. members in July, but it has not attracted support from any of the world’s nine nuclear powers, which together possess nearly 15,000 atomic weapons. The United States and others boycotted the U.N. treaty discussions.
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said at the time that “we have to be realistic” about the nuclear threat of rogue nations such as North Korea, and she warned that the ban could actually increase the risk of nuclear war, not reduce it.
Nuclear powers around the world repeated their opposition to efforts to ban the weapons following the Nobel announcement Friday.
“The Nuclear Ban Treaty does not move us closer to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement. “In fact, it risks undermining the progress we have made over the years in disarmament and non-proliferation.”
The White House and leaders of other nuclear powers have instead endorsed the nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, which limits but does not ban the powerful weapons. Russia and the United States hold the world’s largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Signatories to the prohibition treaty would be banned from developing, testing and possessing nuclear weapons, as well as threatening to use them. The treaty will go into effect once 50 nations ratify it.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized 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,” chairwoman Berit ReissAndersen of Norway said as she announced the prize in Oslo.
“There is a popular belief among people all over the world that the world has become more dangerous, and that there is a tendency where we experience that the threats of nuclear conflict have come closer,” Reiss-Andersen said. The group has been successful in “engaging people in the world who are scared of the fact that they are supposed to be protected by atomic weapons,” she said.
Asked whether the award was intended as a pushback to Trump’s martial messages, Reiss-Andersen said that “we’re not kicking anybody’s leg with this prize. We are giving great encouragement.”