Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Japan's nuke-bomb survivors group
Japan's leading organization of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, marking a milestone for the group that has campaigned over the years for the abolition of nuclear weapons, Kyodo reports.
The group, founded in 1956, was awarded the prize "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," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.
According to the Committee, "these historical witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons. The Hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons."
The Norwegian Nobel Committee reminds that "no nuclear weapon has been used in war in nearly 80 years.The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the Hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo."
