In these times of war in which the atomic threat once again flies over the globe, the Norwegian Nobel Committee This Friday in Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the only Japanese national organization of the so-called hibakushathe survivors of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The award has been given to him “for his efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons should never be used again,” said the president of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes. . The recognition follows in the wake of 2017, when Oslo awarded the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Nihon Hidankyo is a grassroots movement founded in 1956 that brings together different organizations from the 47 Japanese prefectures and represents almost all hibakusha organized. All its officials and members are victims of the atomic bomb. The recognition comes at a time when, almost eighty years after the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his memory begins to fade. The number of survivors living in Japan in 2016 was 174,080, according to the most up-to-date figure on the organization’s website. They were almost double in 1999.
Its members, among other things, are dedicated to telling their stories, to make people aware of their experiences, the real damage and the aftermath of the atomic bombing, both inside and outside Japan. Those affected are sent to the UN, nuclear weapon states and other countries and regions around the world. Upon learning of the award this Friday, its director, Toshiyuki Mimaki, told Reuters that this award should serve as a reminder that atomic weapons “must be abolished.”
Among its objectives are “the prevention of nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons” and the search for state compensation for the damage caused by the atomic bomb. “State responsibility for launching the war, which led to the damage from the atomic bombing, must be recognized and state compensation must be provided,” its website reads.
The Nobel is also a way of recognizing the long battle of the hibakusha, which They had a difficult path from the beginning, marked by silence and stigma. At first they had to live with US censorship of the bombings and discrimination from their own compatriots who feared the possible effects of radiation. Some even hid the fact that they had been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “For almost 10 years after the bombing, the hibakusha They received no help from the American occupation forces, who strictly forbade people to write or speak about the bombing and the damage, including the miserable death of 200,000 people,” nor did they receive any help from their government, when the country recovered. its sovereignty in 1952, the organization explains on the website.
The US bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later are estimated to have killed an estimated 210,000 people by the end of that year. Japan surrendered six days after the bombing of Nagasaki, ending World War II. The atomic bomb has not been used since, largely thanks to a global movement whose members have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, according to the Nobel committee. This movement was giving shape to a “powerful international norm that stigmatized the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable,” he adds. “The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the hibakusha have greatly contributed to the establishment of the nuclear taboo. “It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure,” the Nobel committee said.
The Norwegian organization focuses on how nuclear powers continue to modernize and improve their arsenals, how new countries appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons, and how the nuclear threat is used in ongoing wars. “At this moment in human history, it is worth remembering what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.”
Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made numerous more or less veiled references to the nuclear threat; The possibility of an atomic conflict is also not foreign to the Middle East, where fear hovers that Iran will boost its nuclear program and acquire atomic weapons, weapons that Israel already possesses. Specialized organizations consider that Israel also has the atomic bomb, although it has never officially recognized it. In the Asia-Pacific region, another of the planet’s hot spots, North Korea, which carried out its last nuclear test in 2017, nevertheless exhibited atomic muscle recently, in September, by showing for the first time images of facilities to enrich uranium. ; Shortly after, China, the third nuclear power after Russia and the United States, fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific, the first war test of this type that the Asian giant has carried out since 1980.
Currently nine countries possess nuclear weapons: France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan and India, in addition to the aforementioned Russia, the United States, China, Israel and North Korea. Together, there are about 12,100 nuclear warheads, according to the State of the World’s Nuclear Forces 2024 report by the Federation of Atomic Scientists. cited by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “Although this is a significant decrease from the approximately 70,000 nuclear warheads possessed by nuclear-armed states during the Cold War, nuclear arsenals are expected to increase over the next decade and current forces will become much more capable,” says its website.
It is the second time that a Japanese person or organization has received the Nobel Peace Prize since 1974, when the award was given to former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, who introduced Japan’s so-called three antinuclear principles of not possessing, producing or permitting nuclear weapons in their territory.
285 candidates
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and the International Court of Justice (ITJ) were two of the big favorites for this edition of the Nobel Prize. Both organizations featured prominently in the forecasts of the Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in Oslo and the Norwegian Peace Council. Among the candidates considered with options, there was also the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres.
In total, the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize had 285 candidates, of which 196 were individuals and 89 were organizations, according to the Nobel Committee, which last year awarded the Iranian Narges Mohammadi for her fight for women’s rights. . The Peace Prize is the only one of the six prizes that is awarded and presented outside of Sweden, in Oslo, at the express wish of Alfred Nobel, since in his time Norway was part of the neighboring country.
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