Nobel Peace Prize awarded to anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo

By Vatican News

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , for its "efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."

Taboo against nuclear weapons  under increasing pressure

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the award was assigned to the grassroot organization  as the “taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure.”

He said the Committee “wishes to honour all survivors who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace.”

Efforts to eradicate nuclear weapons have been honoured in the past by the Nobel Committee.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the peace prize in 2017, and in 1995 Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs won for “their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms.”

This year's prize was awarded against a backdrop of devastating conflicts raging in the world, notably in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan. “It is very clear that threats of using nuclear weapons are putting pressure on the important international norm, the taboo of using nuclear weapons,” Watne Frydnes said .