Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo. All you need to know about the Japanese atomic survivors’ group

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the atomic bomb survivors' group Nihon Hidankyo. Nihon Hidankyo is a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nihon Hidankyo won the Nobel Peace Prize for their campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons. 

Amid the growing concerns about the possible use of nuclear weapons, the award sends a message to world leaders to take a step back and analyse the damage caused in Japan by unleashing nuclear powers. 

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The Nobel committee had said that it had decided to award the prize to the group, "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 survivors of the August 1945 bombings by the US--hibakusha, had helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons. 

Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters that it is extremely meaningful that the organisation that has worked toward abolishing nuclear weapons received the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Since the end of the Second World War, nuclear weapons have not been used. 

On various occasions, Russia's Vladimir Putin has refused to rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine. Also, North Korea has continued to develop nuclear weapons that have the capability to strike the US mainland. 

"At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen,” the Nobel Committee pointed out. 

The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the US killed approximately 1,20,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands of people died of burns and radiation injuries in the following years. 

The Nihon Hidankyo group was formed when the fates of the survivors were neglected. Local Hibakusha associations, along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, formed the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations in 1956. Later, the organisation's name was shortened to Nihon Hidankyo in Japanese. 

Survivors, belonging to the group, have provided thousands of witness accounts relating to the experience of the nuclear bombs.