2017 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to anti-nuclear weapons organisation ICAN

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 has been awarded to The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its work in connection with arms control and disarmament.

ICAN is a coalition of non-governmental organizations from around 100 different countries across the world.

The prize went to ICAN for being “the leading civil society actor in the in the endeavour to achieve a prohibition of nuclear weapons under international law. On 7 July 2017, 122 of the UN member states acceded to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”

The coalition has been fighting to endorse complete implementation of the Treaty.

The chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said the award had been given in recognition of the group’s work “to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”.

Underlining the concern that nuclear weapons have not been made the object of international legal prohibition, the Committee mentioned the “real danger” of more countries trying to obtain nuclear weapon while the existing nuclear states “modernise” their arsenals. The real danger was exemplified by North Korea, the Committee asserted.

The 2017 Peace Prize calls upon nuclear-armed states to initiate negotiations to gradual elimination of the world’s 15,000 nuclear weapons.

"ICAN has in the past year given the efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons a new direction and new vigour," said the Nobel committee.

Watch the very moment the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize is announced! #NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/H0AtcRU7tn

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 6, 2017

Last year, the Nobel Peace prize was bestowed upon the President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end".

The award is given to both individuals and organizations around the globe, with 26 organizations bagging the award till date.

ICAN released the below statement after being awarded the prize:

This prize is a tribute to the tireless efforts of many millions of campaigners and concerned citizens worldwide who, ever since the dawn of the atomic age, have loudly protested nuclear weapons, insisting that they can serve no legitimate purpose and must be forever banished from the face of our earth.

It is a tribute also to the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the hibakusha – and victims of nuclear test explosions around the world. [...]

We most humbly thank the Norwegian Nobel Committee. This award shines a needed light on the path the ban treaty provides towards a world free of nuclear weapons. Before it is too late, we must take that path.