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The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organisation of atomic bomb survivors from the 1945 attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The grassroots group was awarded the prize on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel committee.
The committee said the award was “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 prize comes against the backdrop of rising nuclear rhetoric from figures including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The nuclear powers are modernising and upgrading their arsenals . . . and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing warfare,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the new chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee.
“At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen,” he added.
Frydnes warned that today’s nuclear weapons were far more destructive than those dropped by the US on the two Japanese cities in 1945.
“They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically. A nuclear war could destroy our civilisation,” he said.
There are 106,000 living survivors of the two atomic bombings, who are known as hibakusha in Japanese and now have an average age of almost 86.
Many experienced severe discrimination in the postwar years related to their radiation exposure, as did their children.
In 2016, Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima and participated in a ceremony where senior figures in Nihon Hidankyo featured prominently.
They included Mikiso Iwasa, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, a former chair of the organisation and one of the world’s foremost crusaders against nuclear weapons.
At the 70th anniversary of the bombing in 2015, Iwasa told the Financial Times that the greatest risk the world faced was forgetting what had taken place in Hiroshima.
“The fact that the world is still bristling with 15,000 nuclear weapons means that anyone in the world could become a hibakusha at any time,” he said.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the award was “extremely meaningful” for a group that had long worked for abolition of nuclear weapons.
Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said: “The award is a reminder of why we must continue to work for both the disarmament and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. And it is a necessary warning against those who make direct threats about the use of nuclear weapons.”
Much of the focus before this year’s prize had centred on the Middle East after a year of conflict.
But the committee said it wanted to honour the remaining survivors of atomic bombs who “despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace”.
“One day, the [survivors] will no longer be among us as witnesses to history,” Frydnes said. “But with a strong culture of remembrance and continued commitment, new generations in Japan are carrying forward the experience and the message of the witnesses.”
The winner of the prize receives SKr11mn ($1mn).
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