Since the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Linus Pauling in 1962, contributions to nuclear disarmament have recurrently been an explicit motivation for granting the Prize.1
According to the Nobel Peace Prize committee, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) received the Prize this year for creating new momentum in disarmament efforts by again drawing “…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.”
The motivation of the 2017 Peace Prize follows that of earlier Prizes for nuclear disarmament, for example, the one awarded to Alva Myrdal in 1982. Myrdal received the Prize for her contributions to the nuclear disarmament negotiations in Geneva and for her broader efforts to raise awareness, not least through her book, The Game of Disarmament (published in 1976). The book, which also draws on information obtained in discussions with the future Nobel Laureates in the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (recipients in 1995), graphically describes both the catastrophic consequences of a global nuclear war and critically picks apart the arguments made in support of nuclear weapons; a similar approach for which ICAN was awarded in 2017, this time underlining the humanitarian impact of any use of nuclear weapons.Read More