Japanese atomic bomb survivor movement Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize
The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the grassroots Japanese atomic bomb survivor movement Nihon Hidankyo.
BREAKING NEWS
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2024 #NobelPeacePrize to the Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the peace prize for its… pic.twitter.com/YVXwnwVBQO— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 11, 2024
Key events
Nihon Hidankyo co-head Toshiyuki Mimaki said the group’s recognition would give a major boost to its efforts to demonstrate that the abolition of nuclear weapons was possible, Reuters and AFP have reported.
“It would be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons can be achieved,” Mimaki told the news conference in Hiroshima. “Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished … Nuclear weapons do not bring peace.”
He added the idea that nuclear weapons bring peace is a fallacy. “It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists,” he said.
“For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there. Politicians should know these things.”
Winner describes Gaza as “like Japan 80 years ago”
At a media conference, the co-head of 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nihon Hidankyo has compared the situation for children in Gaza to that of the situation in Japan at the end of the second world war.
“In Gaza, children in blood are being held. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” Toshiyuki Mimaki told a news conference in Tokyo, AFP reports.
The committee – as it is prone to do – sprung quite a surprise there: no one was expecting that.
It justified its decision as follows:
One day, the Hibakusha will no longer be among us as witnesses to history. But with a strong culture of remembrance and continued commitment, new generations in Japan are carrying forward the experience and the message of the witnesses. They are inspiring and educating people around the world. In this way they are helping to maintain the nuclear taboo – a precondition of a peaceful future for humanity.
The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 to Nihon Hidankyo is securely anchored in Alfred Nobel’s will. This year’s prize joins a distinguished list of Peace Prizes that the Committee has previously awarded to champions of nuclear disarmament and arms control.
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 fulfils Alfred Nobel’s desire to recognise efforts of the greatest benefit to humankind.
The Norwegian Nobel committee said that in awarding the 2024 Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, it:
wishes to honour all atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace. They help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.
The committee said year would mark 80 years since two US atomic bombs killed an estimated 120 000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a comparable number dying of burn and radiation injuries in the aftermath. “The fates of those who survived the infernos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, were long concealed and neglected,” the committee said.
It said the award acknowledged one encouraging fact:
No nuclear weapon has been used in war in nearly 80 years. The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the Hibakusha have contributed greatly 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 nuclear powers are modernising and upgrading their arsenals; new countries appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons; and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing warfare.
At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.
Summary
Nihon Hidankyo’s website, perhaps unsurprisingly, was briefly down after the announcement, but is now up again.
The organisation describes itself as:
the only nation-wide organization of A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Hibakusha). It has member organizations in all 47 Japanese prefectures, thus representing almost all organized Hibakusha. Its officials and members are all Hibakusha. The total number of the surviving Hibakusha living in Japan is 174,080, as of March 2016. There are several thousands of more Hibakusha living in Korea and other parts of the world outside Japan. HIDANKYO is cooperating with those organizations in their work for the defense of the living and rights of these people.
It says its main activities are:
1) The prevention of nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons, including the signing of an international agreement for a total ban and the elimination of nuclear weapons. The convening of an international conference to reach this goal is also part of Hidankyo’s basic demand;
2) State compensation for the A-bomb damages. The state responsibility of having launched the war, which led to the damage by the atomic bombing, should be acknowledged, and the state compensation provided.
3) Improvement of the current policies and measures on the protection and assistance for the Hibakusha.
The committee chair, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, described Nihon Hidankyo as “a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha”.
It was was receiving the peace prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”, he said.
Japanese atomic bomb survivor movement Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize
The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the grassroots Japanese atomic bomb survivor movement Nihon Hidankyo.
BREAKING NEWS
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2024 #NobelPeacePrize to the Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the peace prize for its… pic.twitter.com/YVXwnwVBQO— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 11, 2024
We’re about five minutes away from the announcement…
Will the committee spring another surprise this year, or opt for a potentially controversial winner?
Many peace prize laureats have been widely criticised in the past, including those for Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Conversely, many see it as unfortunate that Mahatma Gandhi was not recognised with the prize during his lifetime.
The committee has not shied away from sending strong signals to repressive and regimes, upsetting in recent years countries such as Iran, Belarus, Russia, China, Pakistan and others.
So who is in the running?
According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme, there were 59 armed conflicts in the world in 2023, almost double the number in 2009. Some experts have said that could be a reason not to award a this year.
The committee has decided not to award the prize 19 times in its 123-year existence, but has said this year that the large number of conflicts this year may make rewarding peace efforts “perhaps more important than ever”.
Individuals and organisations seen as likely frontrunners include the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, and the UN Secretary General, António Guterres.
A prize to UNRWA would be controversial, experts have said, given allegations made by Israel that some of its staff took part in the 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel by militant group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.
UNRWA has said Israel is trying to get it disbanded. Set up in 1949, the agency provides humanitarian assistance to millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
The committee may want to focus on the need to bolster the international world order built after the second world war and its crowning institution, the United Nations – meaning the laureate could be Guterres.
Alternatively, an award to the ICJ, which has condemned Russia’s war on Ukraine and called on Israel to ensure that no genocide is committed in Gaza, would be a strong signal that international humanitarian law must be upheld.
Others mentioned as possible winners include the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, the Emergency Response Rooms initiative in Sudan and the Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj.
Who has been nominated?
In all, 286 candidates – 197 individuals and 89 organisations – are known to have been nominated this year, compared to 351 last year.
Although those eligible to nominate can reveal who they have proposed, the Norwegian Nobel Committee keeps the candidates’ names secret for 50 years, meaning there is no certainty about the full list of nominees.
Some of the known nominees this year include the UN refugee agency UNHCR, Pope Francis, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, ex-Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and British naturalist David Attenborough.
Bookmakers have the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony in February, as one of the favourites to win this year’s award, but that cannot happen because no one can receive the prize posthumously.
Another bookies’ favourite, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is unlikely to win because he is the leader of a nation at war.
How does the prize work?
Nominations for potential winners may be submitted by government ministers and MPs of sovereign states, heads of state, senior international lawyers, directors of peace research and foreign policy institutes, university professors in selected fields and former Nobel Peace Prize winners.
Like the other Nobel prizes, the award consists of a diploma, a gold medal and $1m. They prizes are presented at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.
The winner is chosen by a secretive five-person committee made up of Norwegian nationals (often former politicians, but not members of the current government or sitting MPs) and assisted by specially appointed expert advisers.
Its members this year include former education minister Kristin Clemet, foreign policy expert Asle Toje, former culture and equality minister Anne Enger, and Gry Larsen, a former senior civil servant.
The chair is newly-appointed Jørgen Watne Frydnes, who only took over from his predecessor, Berit Reiss-Andersen, in February this year. He was formerly the CEO of a leading Norwegian hospitality company.
Welcome to the blog
Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the 2024 Nobel peace prize, whose winner is due to be announced in Oslo in just over an hour’s time.
The peace prize is the only Nobel awarded in the Norwegian capital; the others are announced in Stockholm. The choice of winner is often unexpected, and if the committee seeks to send a message, can also be controversial.
Last year’s prize, for example, went the jailed Iranian women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi, in a clear rebuke to Tehran’s theocratic leaders and a boost for the country’s anti-government protesters.
Past winners include presidents, campaigners and organisations ranging from Jimmy Carter to Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela to Liu Xiaobo, and the EU to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Awarded since 1901, this year’s prize, with wars raging in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere around the world, is being particularly closely watched. Follow us here for all the build-up, the announcement – and the reaction.