The Associated Press
OSLO–The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a group of mostly young activists pushing for a global treaty to ban the cataclysmic bombs.
The award of the $1.1-million prize comes amid heightened tensions over both North Korea’s aggressive development of nuclear weapons and U.S. President Donald Trump’s persistent criticism of the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
The prize committee wanted “to send a signal to North Korea and the U.S. that they need to go into negotiations,” Oeivind Stenersen, a historian of the peace prize, told The Associated Press.
“The prize is also coded support to the Iran nuclear deal,” Stenersen added.
The Geneva-based ICAN has campaigned actively for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted by the United Nations in July, but which needs ratification from 50 countries.
Only three countries have ratified it so far.
The group “has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world’s nations to pledge to co-operate . . . in efforts to stigmatize, prohibit, and eliminate nuclear weapons,” Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said in the announcement.
She noted similar prohibitions have been reached on chemical and biological weapons, land mines, and cluster munitions.
