UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 (IPS) – The United Nations Secretary Basic António Guterres congratulated grassroots Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo on being awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
“The atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also referred to as the hibakusha, are selfless, soul-bearing witnesses of the horrific human value of nuclear weapons,” he stated in a press release.
“Whereas their numbers develop smaller every year, the relentless work and resilience of the hibakusha are the spine of the worldwide nuclear disarmament motion.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2024 Peace Prize for “its efforts to realize a world freed from nuclear weapons and for demonstrating by way of witness testimony that nuclear weapons must not ever be used once more.”
The committee stated the worldwide motion arose in response to the atom bomb assaults of August 1945.
“The testimony of the Hibakusha—the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—is exclusive on this bigger context. These historic witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the globe by drawing on private tales, creating instructional campaigns based mostly on their very own expertise, and issuing pressing warnings in opposition to the unfold and use of nuclear weapons. The Hibakusha assist us to explain the indescribable, to suppose the unthinkable, and to in some way grasp the incomprehensible ache and struggling brought on by nuclear weapons.”
It singled out Nihon Hidankyo, who reportedly cried following the announcement and different representatives of the Hibakusha to have contributed vastly to the institution of the “nuclear taboo.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee acknowledged one encouraging reality: “No nuclear weapon has been utilized in conflict in almost 80 years.”
The award comes because the world prepares to mark 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed an estimated 120 000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A comparable quantity died of burn and radiation accidents within the months and years that adopted.
“At the moment’s nuclear weapons have far larger harmful energy. They will kill thousands and thousands and would influence the local weather catastrophically. A nuclear conflict may destroy our civilization,” the committee stated.
“The fates of those that survived the infernos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been lengthy hid and uncared for. In 1956, native Hibakusha associations together with victims of nuclear weapons checks within the Pacific fashioned the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Victims Organizations. This identify was shortened in Japanese to Nihon Hidankyo. It will turn out to be the most important and most influential Hibakusha organisation in Japan.”
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 fulfills Alfred Nobel’s need to acknowledge efforts of the best profit to humankind.
Guterres stated he would “always remember my many conferences with them through the years. Their haunting residing testimony reminds the world that the nuclear risk shouldn’t be confined to historical past books. Nuclear weapons stay a transparent and current hazard to humanity, as soon as once more showing within the every day rhetoric of worldwide relations.”
He stated the one option to eradicate the specter of nuclear weapons is to eradicate them altogether.
IPS UN Bureau Report
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