Nobel Peace Prize goes to Japanese anti-nuclear weapons organization

The Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo will receive the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Institute announced this on Friday in Oslo. The organization is honored for its commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons and also for demonstrating through eyewitness testimony that such weapons should never be used again.

“This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, will receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through testimony that nuclear weapons should never be used again,” the Nobel Committee said.

The organization had not yet been able to reach them to tell them about their award, said the new chairman of the committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, when the award was announced.

On August 6, 1945, a US Army bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Immediately afterwards and in the first months after the attack, around 140,000 people died, and in the following years the radioactive radiation killed a further 60,000 people. Three days after it was dropped on Hiroshima, the US dropped a second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing more than 70,000 more people.

This time a total of 286 candidates were nominated, including 197 personalities and 89 organizations. Compared to previous years, the field of candidates has shrunk significantly. The Nobel institutions have traditionally kept secret who is among the nominees for 50 years. This leads to speculation every year as to who the Nobel Committee will ultimately select.

No clear favorite for the Nobel Peace Prize

In times of Middle East conflict, the Ukraine war and dozens of other conflicts around the world, no clear favorite has emerged this time. At a betting office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj, Chinese-Uyghur government critic Ilham Tohti and Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tichanowskaja were recently at the top. Behind them are the states of Ireland, Norway and Spain for their coordinated recognition of a state of Palestine. However, the countries only took this step in early summer, while the nomination deadline for the Nobel Prize had already expired on January 31st.

Last year the award went to the women’s rights activist Mohammadi, who has been in prison in her native Iran for a long time. She was honored “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.”

30 years after Nobel Prize for Palestinian and Israeli leaders

Since the prize was first awarded in 1901, 111 individuals and 27 different organizations have been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, the UN refugee agency UNHCR twice and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) even three times.

As a rule, the Peace Prize is awarded to one personality or organization alone, but sometimes two prize winners share it. The award has only been divided among three chosen people three times, including when the then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the then Israeli top politicians Shimon Peres and Izchak Rabin were honored 30 years ago for their efforts to find a solution to the Middle East conflict – which is currently escalating again.

This week, this year’s Nobel Prize winners in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature were announced. The award in economics will follow on Monday. All of these Nobel Prizes are traditionally awarded in Stockholm, the Nobel Peace Prize is the only one in Oslo.

The awards will be ceremoniously presented on December 10th, the anniversary of the death of the dynamite inventor and prize donor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). They are endowed with prize money of eleven million Swedish crowns (just under 970,000 euros) per category.

Note: This article has been updated several times.