The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Nihon Hidankyo, an organization founded following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The awarding of this prize was particularly awaited this year, at a time when deadly conflicts are shaking the planet and respect for international standards is increasingly wavering.
The Nobel Prize has thus decided to shed light on an essential area, which is that of the use of nuclear weapons. An area, paradoxically, less exposed to controversy and polarization even if it came back to the fore after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a state with nuclear weapons.
Last year, the Prize Committee awarded it to Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for her defense of human rights. Behind her, there were hundreds of thousands of Iranians, and especially Iranian women, who had been encouraged in the vast movement that ended up being called “Women, Life, Freedom”, in reference to the slogan chanted during demonstrations across the country.
Recognition of civil society
The recognition of representatives of civil society – in a troubled global political landscape to say the least – had also guided the Norwegian Committee the previous year with the choice of organizations working in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Memorial on the Russian side, the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, as well as Alès Bialiatski, a political activist in Belarus.
On several occasions, the Nobel had tried another path. He tried to highlight still unfinished attempts at peace, as if to better stimulate them. It has had a bad time so far: by distinguishing Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali in 2019, this Prize has not slowed down the murderous wars waged by Ethiopia against the Tigray region. In the same spirit, the awarding of the Nobel Prize in 2009 to American President Barack Obama, who had barely taken office, also caused gnashing of teeth.
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