Against the backdrop of war in Ukraine, the Middle East and around fifty other armed conflicts in 2023, the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo received the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize “for its efforts in favor of a world without nuclear weapons “.
As a backdrop a litany of war, from Ukraine to the Middle East. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this Friday, October 11, to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo “for its efforts in favor of a world without nuclear weapons.”
As well as for “having demonstrated by testimonies that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.
By awarding this prize to this popular movement of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki founded in 1956, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honor all these survivors “who, despite their physical suffering and painful memories, chose to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and commitment to peace.
The 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosion in 2025
The year 2025 will mark the 80th anniversary of the explosion of these two American atomic bombs which killed around 120,000 inhabitants. “A comparable number of people died from burns and radiation in the months and years that followed,” the committee said.
This Norwegian committee wants to emphasize on this occasion “that no nuclear weapon has been used in war for almost 80 years”. But that the nuclear powers are improving their arsenal while they “have a particular responsibility” to prevent their proliferation, that other countries are trying to acquire this weapon and that nuclear threats are made in current conflicts. As in the context of the war in Ukraine on the part of Vladimir Putin or on another front, on the part of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.
“At this point in human history, it is appropriate to remember what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever known,” the committee wrote on X.
The president of the Nobel committee Jørgen Watne Frydnes, for his part, found it “alarming” this Friday that the “taboo on the use of nuclear weapons” was “put under pressure”.
A Nobel “perhaps more important than ever”
The highlight of the Nobel season, this prize was the only one to be awarded from the Nobel Institute in Oslo, those for other disciplines being awarded in Stockholm.
Last year, it went to Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned in her country, for her fight against the compulsory veil for women and against the death penalty.
Given the number of armed conflicts recorded in 2023 – 59, almost double their number in 2009 according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program – some experts suggested not awarding a Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 as was done at 19 repeated in its history.
On the contrary, the Norwegian Nobel committee believes that such a context makes its award “perhaps more important than ever”. The Nobel committee had 286 nominations to choose from this year.
Anglo-Saxon men mainly decorated in 2024
The Nobel season has so far, as is often the case, given pride of place to Anglo-Saxon men with seven North Americans or British rewarded, but also to artificial intelligence (AI).
On Monday, the medicine prize was awarded to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNAs, a new class of tiny RNA molecules.
The next day, that of physics rewarded the British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton and the American John Hopfield who, while working on “automatic learning” crucial for the development of AI, are sounding the alarm on this technology likely, according to them, to become uncontrollable.
The Chemistry Nobel was awarded on Wednesday to the American David Baker and to a duo formed by another American, John Jumper, and the British Demis Hassabis for having unlocked the secrets of proteins, relying on AI and technology. ‘computer science.
The only feminine and non-Western touch so far, the South Korean author Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.
As usual, the economics prize, added in 1969 to the original Nobels, will close the ball next Monday.
The Nobels, which consist of a diploma, a gold medal and a check for 11 million Swedish crowns (around 970,000 euros), will be formally awarded on December 10.
