SECOND JAPANESE WINNER
Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the dropping of nuclear bombs by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
With the award, the committee was drawing attention to a “very dangerous situation” in the world, with China-US relations, and Russia-US relations, “the most toxic” since the end of the Cold War, according to Dan Smith, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“If there is a military conflict, there is a risk of it escalating to nuclear weapons … They (Nihon Hidankyo) are really an important voice to remind us about the destructive nature of nuclear weapons,” he told Reuters.
Smith also said the committee had achieved “a triple strike” with the prize – drawing attention to the human suffering of nuclear bomb survivors, the danger of nuclear weapons and that the world has survived without their use for nearly 80 years.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has regularly placed focus on the issue of nuclear weapons, most recently with its award to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the award in 2017.
It is the second Nobel Peace Prize for a Japanese recipient in the prize’s 123-year history, 50 years after former prime minister Eisaku Sato won it in 1974 “for his contribution to stabilise conditions in the Pacific Rim area and for signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”.
The peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine.
Imprisoned Iranian women’s rights advocate Narges Mohammadi won in 2023.
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about US$1 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on Dec 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
