What is the Nihon Hidankyo organization, Nobel Peace Prize winner?

A Japanese anti-atomic weapons organization has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this Friday. The Nihon Hidankyo organization brings together survivors of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. An official from the confederation explained that he “never dreamed of winning” the prize. A prize, which is the only Nobel awarded in Oslo, those of other disciplines being awarded in Stockholm.

This confederation, founded in 1956, initially had the mission of pushing the Japanese government to allocate rights to hibakushas, ​​the name given to the victims of the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Its mission is also to implement actions aimed at denouncing the use of nuclear weapons, whether bombs, tests or their financing.

Rewarded for her long fight

Nihon Hidankyo received this award “for his efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons and for having demonstrated, through testimonies, that nuclear weapons should never be used again”, declared the president of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes.

A confederation often rewarded

If the president of Nihon Hidankyo, present at Hiroshima city hall for the announcement, was delighted with the good news and let out a few tears, the confederation is far from being unknown. The confederation has in fact already received the Social Activism Prize in 2010 (World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates) and has been nominated several times (1985, 1994, 2015) for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Bureau international peace.

Actions to denounce nuclear use

Nobel committee president Jørgen Watne Frydnes said on Friday it was “alarming” that the “taboo on the use of nuclear weapons” was “put under pressure”. “No nuclear weapon has been used in war for almost 80 years,” he noted. “It is therefore alarming to note that today, this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is subject to pressure,” he added at a time when nuclear weapons are mentioned in speeches around the war in Ukraine.