Japan's Nihon Hidankyo wins 2024 Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO:

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Japan's Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors pushing for a nuclear weapons ban, as states like Russia threaten to use them.

The group, also known as Hibakusha and founded in 1956, received the honour "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," said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

Nihon Hidankyo's co-head expressed surprise.

"Never did I dream this could happen," Toshiyuki Mimaki told reporters in Tokyo with tears in his eyes.

"It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace," he said. But "if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won't end there," he warned. "Politicians should know these things."

The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the international "nuclear taboo" that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was "under pressure". "This year's prize is a prize that focuses on the necessity of upholding this nuclear taboo. And we all have a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers," Frydnes told reporters.

Moscow has repeatedly brandished the nuclear threat in a bid to dissuade the West from supporting Ukraine, which has been fending off Russia's invasion since February 2022.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said last week his country would use nuclear weapons "without hesitation" if attacked by South Korea and ally the United States. And in the Middle East, where tensions have escalated dramatically, Israel, the region's only nuclear-armed state, has vowed a "deadly, precise and surprising" response to Iran's direct strike on Israeli territory on October 1.

Tehran has significantly ramped up its nuclear programme and now has enough material to build more than three atomic bombs, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).