Japan’s anti-N- weapon group Nihon Hidankyo win 2024 Nobel Peace Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee Norway has chosen the anti-nuclear weapon Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Committee chose the Nihon Hidankyo organisation for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and demonstrate through victims of nuclear weapons testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

Representatives of the Nihon Hidankyo organisation will receive their 11 million Kroner prize at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on 10 December 2024. The Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Economics are awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. At the same time, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is felicitated in Oslo.Norway.

About the Nobel Prize-winning Organisation Nihon Hidankyo

During the Second World War, the United States Air Force dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. A Uranium-enriched atom bomb codenamed "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima on 8 August 1945, and the second plutonium-based bomb codenamed 'Fat Man' was dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.

More than 2 lakh people were killed in the attack, and the survivors suffered the effects of radiation. 

A powerful local grassroots anti-nuclear weapon movement emerged in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, popularly called Hibakusha (a combination of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

In 1956, the local Hibakusha association, along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, formed the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations. 

Nihon Hidankyo is the shortened Japanese name of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations. They are the largest and most influential Hibakusha organisation in Japan.

Nihon is the Japanese name of Japan.

The victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were at the forefront of the movement, where they shared their own experiences and the horrors of the aftereffects of nuclear weapons. They tirelessly worked to stigmatise the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. This norm later became known as “the nuclear taboo”.

Nobel Peace Prize 

The Nobel Foundation instituted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1900, as per Alfred Nobel's will, and the first prize was given in 1901.

• The first Prize was jointly shared by Jean Henry Dunnat of Switzerland and Frédéric Passy of France.

• Between 1901 and 2024, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded 105 times to 142 laureates – 111 individuals and 31 organisations. It was not awarded on 19 occasions: in 1914-1916, 1918, 1923, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1939-1943, 1948, 1955-1956, 1966-1967, and 1972, as no person or institution was found suitable.
• The only institution to win the prize thrice was the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC) in 1917, 1944 and 1963.
• The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize twice, in 1954 and 1981.
• Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner of Austria was the first female to be honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.
• In 2023, the prize was awarded to the Iranian peace activist Narges Mohammadi.

Indian Nobel Peace Prize Winners

• Albanian-born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, also known as Mother Teresa, was the first Indian citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She started her organisation, "The Missionaries of Charity," to look after the poor and destitute in Kolkata(then Calcutta).
• In 2014, Kailash Satyaarthi shared the prize with Pakistan’s Mala Yousafzai. Kailash is the founder of the Save the Childhood Movement, which works for the abolition of child labour in India and rescues children from child labour.