Anti-nuclear weapons group ICAN accepts Nobel Peace Prize

World Today

Anti-nuclear weapons group ICAN accepts Nobel Peace PrizeOslo, Norway 20171210. Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize 2017, representatives of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), with leader of the Nobel committee Berit Reiss-Andersen, left, Hiroshima Survivor Setsuko Thurlow and leader of ICAN Beatrice Fihn in the City Hall Oslo, Norway, Sunday Dec. 10, 2017. ICAN are officially receive the Nobel Peace Prize award during a ceremony. (Berit Roald/ NTB scanpix via AP)

As tension over Pyongyang’s nuclear threat rises, so are the groups that are fighting for nuclear disarmament. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As the group accepts the award in Norway, many say the decision offers hope of action.

CGTN’s Toby Muse reports.
Follow Toby Muse on Twitter @tobymuse

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN received its Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. The award was in recognition of the group’s mission to push an international treaty to ban nuclear bombs.

ICAN is pushing to enforce the U.N. treaty adopted by dozens of nations that calls for a ban on nuclear weapons, although none of the major nuclear powers joined in.

Receiving the prize, the campaign’s director appeared to reference the danger of the on-going nuclear standoff between the United States and the DPRK.

“A moment of panic or carelessness, a misconstrued comment or bruised ego, could easily lead us to the destruction of entire cities,” Beatrice Fihn, ICAN’s executive director, said. “A calculated military escalation could lead to the indiscriminate murder of civilians.”

Nuclear war is one “impulsive tantrum away,” warned the group’s head.

Also on hand to accept the award was Setsuko Thurlow, a campaign supporter and survivor of the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

According to the Atomic Archive, that bomb, and another in Nagasaki, killed an estimated 105,000 people.

“We said: nuclear weapons and humanity cannot co-exist,” Thurlow said.

The Nobel prizes were announced back in October. Last year’s winner was Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, in recognition of his peace process to end his country’s long-running civil war.