Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Anti-Nuclear Weapons Group (Video)

ICANW honored for “work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons”

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons on Friday.

In its explanation of the award the Nobel Committee said it was honoring the group’s “work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”

It was a notably safe choice for the Nobel committee, coming in a year in which the nuclear ambitions of countries such as Iran and North Korea have dominated international news.

“It is the firm conviction of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that ICAN, more than anyone else, has in the past year given the efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons a new direction and new vigour,” the Nobel Committee said in additional comments online.

Yesterday, the committee awarded the Nobel Prize for literature to Japanese-born English author Kazuo Ishiguro.

Comments