Most nations, these days have access to nuclear weapons. But is it the right decision? What problem cannot be solved over a small round table?
Ican, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said a ‘nuclear crisis’ could be caused by a ‘bruised ego’, in an apparent reference to US-North Korea tensions.
Accepting the prize in Oslo on Sunday, the group’s executive director Beatrice Fihn said: ‘The deaths of millions may be one tiny tantrum away.’ She added: ‘We have a choice – the end of nuclear weapons, or the end of us.’ With Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un at the helm of their respective countries, the hostility between the two countries has escalated significantly in 2017.
Speaking at the ceremony in Oslo, Ms Fihn said “a moment of panic” could lead to the “destruction of cities and the deaths of millions of civilians” from nuclear weapons.
The risk of such weapons being used, she added, was “greater today than during the Cold War”.
‘This is the way forward,’ Fihn said, of the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. ‘There is only one way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons – prohibit and eliminate them.’
can, a coalition of hundreds of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), has worked for a treaty to ban the weapons.
Prior to presenting the prize on Sunday, Nobel committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen offered a similar warning, saying that “irresponsible leaders can come to power in any nuclear state”.
Ms Reiss-Andersen commended Ican which, she said, had succeeded in highlighting the dangers of nuclear weapons as well as trying to eradicate them.
Ms Reiss-Andersen also acknowledged the contributions of Setsuko Thurlow, an 85-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and now an Ican campaigner.The leading activist was just 13 when nuclear bombing devastated her hometown Hiroshima in 1945.
Thurlow said the blast left her buried under the rubble of a school, but she was able to see some light and crawl to safety. ‘Our light now is the ban treaty,’ she said, referring to the treaty that needs another 47 countries to ratify it before it can become binding. ‘I repeat those words that I heard called to me in the ruins of Hiroshima: “Don’t give up. Keep pushing. See the light? Crawl towards it.”
Left to right: Nobel committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen, Setsuko Thurlow-Hiroshima survivor and Ican’s executive director Beatrice Fihn
Ican, formed in 2007 and inspired by a similar campaign to ban the use of landmines, has made it its mission to highlight the humanitarian risk of nuclear weapons.
A coalition of hundreds of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the Geneva-based group helped pave the way for the introduction of a UN treaty banning the weapons, which was signed this year.
While 122 countries backed the treaty in July, the talks were notably boycotted by the world’s nine known nuclear powers and the only Nato member to discuss it, the Netherlands, voted against.
Only three countries, the Holy See, Guyana and Thailand, have so far ratified the treaty, which requires 50 ratifications to come into force.
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