The Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 was awarded to ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
The organization is 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.
Through binding international agreements, the international community has previously adopted prohibitions against land mines, cluster munitions and biological and chemical weapons.
Nuclear weapons are even more destructive, but have not yet been made the object of a similar international legal prohibition. Through its work, ICAN has helped to fill this legal gap, Nobelprize.org reported.
ICAN is a coalition of non-governmental organizations from around 100 different countries around the globe. The coalition has been a driving force in the nations to pledge to cooperate with all relevant stakeholders in an effort to stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. To date, 108 states have made such a commitment, known as the Humanitarian Pledge.
This year on July 7, 122 of the UN member states acceded to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As soon as the treaty is ratified by 50 states, the ban on nuclear weapons will enter into force and will be binding under international law for all the countries that are party to the treaty.
The Nobel Committee is aware that an international legal prohibition will not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon, and that so far neither the states that already have nuclear weapons nor their closest allies have supported the nuclear weapon ban treaty. The committee emphasizes that the next steps toward attaining a world free of nuclear weapons must involve the nuclear-armed states.
This year’s peace prize is therefore also a call upon these states to initiate serious negotiations with a view to the gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of almost 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world.