This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo of survivors of the World War II atomic bombings.

“This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is 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,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in Oslo on Friday.

This year, a total of 286 candidates were nominated, including 197 individuals and 89 organisations.

Compared to previous years, the field of candidates has shrunk considerably. The Nobel institutions traditionally keep the list of nominees secret for 50 years.

This week, the Nobel Prize winners in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature have already been announced. The final award, for economics, is due to follow on Monday.

Traditionally, all of the Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, with the Nobel Peace Prize being the only one awarded in Oslo.

Last year, the Peace Prize went to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.

The Nobel Prizes apart from economics stem from the will of the prize founder and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-96).

The prize medals are due to be handed over on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death, with the Nobel Peace Prize again being the only one to be awarded in Oslo instead of Stockholm.

This year, the awards are endowed with 11 million Swedish krona (just over US$1 million) per category.

Source: South China Morning Post

BDST: 1517 HRS, OCT 11, 2024
MN