2017 Nobel Peace Prize for International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons | Sunday Observer

2017 Nobel Peace Prize for International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

15 October, 2017

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Geneva-based group was honoured for helping bring about a UN treaty in July banning nuclear weapons.

Nobel Committee President Berit Reiss-Andersen, said: ‘Through its inspiring and innovative support for the UN negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons, Ican has played a major part in bringing about what in our day and age is equivalent to an international peace congress’.

Referring to the North Korea nuclear crisis, she added: ‘We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time.’

Ican chief Beatrice Fihn said she was ‘delighted’ with the award but added: ‘We’re not done yet. The job isn’t done until nuclear weapons are gone.’

In July, 122 nations adopted a UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons but the nuclear-armed countries - United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea - stayed out of the talks.

Reiss-Andersen said: ‘This year’s Peace Prize is also a call upon these states to initiate serious negotiations with a view to the gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of the almost 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world’.

The Nobel prize seeks to bolster the case of disarmament amid nuclear tensions between the United States and North Korea and uncertainty over the fate of a 2015 deal between Iran and major powers to limit Tehran’s nuclear programme.

US President Donald Trump has called the Iran agreement the ‘worst deal ever negotiated’ and a senior administration official said on Thursday that Trump is expected to announce soon that he will decertify the landmark pact.

The award will be presented, along with the $1million prize fee, on 10 December in Oslo.

Recent winners include Barack Obama in 2009 and the European Union in 2012. 

 

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