ICAN receives Nobel peace prize, urges nuclear nations to adopt UN treaty banning atomic weapons

Pic courtesy: Reuters

Oslo: The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) on Sunday accepted the highly-coveted 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in bringing attention to the consequences of the use of nuclear arms and for promoting a treaty-based prohibition on nuclear weapons.

ICAN is a coalition of 468 grassroots non-governmental groups that campaigned for a UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by 122 nations in July.

They had played a decisive role in the negotiations that led to an adoption of the treaty that was boycotted by the nuclear powers and allies.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize diploma for @nuclearban (ICAN). #NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/OeVbcdT5te — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) December 10, 2017

ICAN becomes a Nobel Peace laureate organisation one year after Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the prize in 2016 for his efforts in negotiating a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.

While announcing the award on October 6, 2017, the Norwegian Nobel Committee had said that the organisation wass receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.

Watch the very moment the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize is announced! #NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/H0AtcRU7tn — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 6, 2017

Beatrice Fihn, ICAN`s executive director, in a speech after receiving the peace prize on behalf of the anti-nuclear group, urged nuclear nations to adopt a UN treaty banning atomic weapons in order to prevent "the end of us".

The treaty is not signed by - and would not apply to - any of the states that already have nuclear arms.

"It provides a choice. A choice between the two endings: the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us," she said in her speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.

"The United States, choose freedom over fear. Russia, choose disarmament over destruction. Britain, choose the rule of law over oppression," she added, before urging France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel to do the same.

Israel is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, although it neither confirms nor denies it.

"A moment of panic or carelessness, a misconstrued comment or bruised ego, could easily lead us unavoidably to the destruction of entire cities," she added, Reuters reported. 

Fihn delivered the Nobel lecture together with Setsuko Thurlow, an 85-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and now an ICAN campaigner.

Thurlow recalled on stage on Sunday some of her memories of the attack on August 6, 1945. 

She was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building about 1.8 kilometres (1.1 mile) from Ground Zero, she said. Most of her classmates, who were in the same room, were burned alive. 

The United States, Britain and France sent second-rank diplomats to the Nobel ceremony.

(With Agency inputs)