Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo – Peter Wallensteen comments

The Nobel Peace Prize 2024 has been awarded to the Japanese grassroots organization Nihon Hidankyo, consisting of survivors from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as Hibakusha.

– I think it was an excellent choice to award the victims of the first, and hopefully only, use of nuclear weapons. It is an appropriate reminder that nuclear weapons are no ordinary weapons. They have the capacity of damaging life across our planet. That’s why ”the nuclear taboo” against them, as stated by the Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jörgen Watne Frydnes is important. It is necessary to recall this at a time when political leaders threaten their use in ongoing conflicts, argues Peter Wallensteen, Dag Hammarskjöld Professor of Peace and Conflict Research Emeritus at Uppsala University.

– The lives of the Hibakusha provide personal testimonies to the immediate and long-term effect of these weapons as well as arguments for why they should not be used. The Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jörgen Watne Frydnes, noted that 120 000 human beings died as a direct effect of the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945 and a similar number have died in the after-effects, observes Wallensteen.

– The Prize is an encouragement to the work for nuclear disarmament. I, of course, think of Uppsala-born Alva Myrdal who shared a Nobel Prize for this in 1982, Wallensteen notes.

The Alva Myrdal Centre for nuclear disarmament (AMC) has since its founding in 2021 been operated by Uppsala University and the Department of Peace and Conflict Research.

– This year’s choice of recipient is also part of a tradition of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to bring attention to the need for disarmament of nuclear weapons. It is very much in line with Alfred Nobel’s will, which emphasizes issues of disarmament. Indeed, the Committee in 2017 awarded ICAN, the international campaign for a ban on nuclear weapons. Earlier Nobel Peace Prizes awarded for efforts related to nuclear disarmament include the Pugwash movement, Physicians for Social Responsibility and also negotiators for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, notably Swedish diplomat Alva Myrdal and Mexican diplomat Alfonso Garcia Robles.

You can read more about Nihon Hidankyo on the Nobel Price website.

Picture: Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach