The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the grassroots Japanese atomic bomb survivor movement Nihon Hidankyo.
The committee chair, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, described Nihon Hidankyo as “a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha”.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it wanted to “honor all atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace”.
It was was receiving the peace prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”, it said.
“They help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” the committee said.
Nobel Peace Prize winners
The organization describes itself as:as the only nationwide organization of A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Hibakusha).
It has member organizations in all 47 Japanese prefectures, thus representing almost all organized Hibakusha. Its officials and members are all Hibakusha. The total number of the surviving Hibakusha living in Japan is 174,080, as of March 2016.
There are several thousands of more Hibakusha living in Korea and other parts of the world outside Japan. HIDANKYO is cooperating with those organizations in their work for the defense of the living and rights of these people.
Winners up to date
The Swedish Academy announced on Thursday that the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean author Han Kang. She is the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
She was awarded “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
Greek writer Ersi Sotiropoulou was also among the favorites to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
On Wednesday, Greek Cypriot Demis Hassabis was among the three scientists who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on predicting the structure of proteins using artificial intelligence.
Hassabis was honored with the prestigious ward along with his colleagues David Baker and John Jumper.
While Hassabis and Jumper used artificial intelligence “to predict the structure of almost all known proteins,” Baker “has learned how to master life’s building blocks and create entirely new proteins.”
Demis Hassabis, born to a Greek-Cypriot father and a Singaporean mother in London, was a child prodigy in chess from the age of four.
Related: Japan Deplores ‘Russia’s Nuclear Threat’ on Hiroshima Anniversary