Peace Nobel awarded to anti-nuke campaign group
6 Oct 2017 6:29 PM GMT
Oslo: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, an organisation seeking to eliminate atomic weapons through an international treaty-based prohibition.
The Geneva-based ICAN won the USD 1.1 million prize because it "has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world's nations to pledge to cooperate ... in efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons," Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said in the announcement.
The prize "sends a message to all nuclear-armed states and all states that continue to rely on nuclear weapons for security that it is unacceptable behaviour. We will not support it, we will not make excuses for it, we can't threaten to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of security. That's not how you build security," ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn told reporters in Geneva.
She said that she "worried that it was a prank" after getting a phone call just minutes before the official Peace Prize announcement was made. Fihn said she didn't believe it until she heard the name of the group proclaimed on television.
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