Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN

The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), with a deep sense of solidarity, warmly welcomes the conferral of the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). By bestowing this honour, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has recognised the significant contribution of ICAN to the formation of the first-ever multilateral “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” that bans the possession, production, use, stockpiling, deployment and transport of nuclear weapons. In short, the treaty sets a new international standard for moving towards a nuclear weapons-free world. This treaty will come into force when a minimum of 50 countries sign and ratify it. Already, there are 53 signatories, and the ratification process has begun. Once the treaty is established under international law, the nine existing nuclear weapons states (NWS), including India, will, by virtue of the treaty, find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

The struggle to abolish slavery was given an enormous fillip by the prior establishment of a moral–legal principle criminalising the institution. In a similar way, ICAN realised that helping in the creation of a moral–legal principle denou­ncing nuclear weapons would be a major step forward in the struggle to eliminate these weapons globally. The existing NWS, that boycotted the United Nations-supported negotiations to bring about this nuclear weapons ban treaty, now stand rebuked. The award also comes at an opportune time, just as the new Trump administration is contemplating walking out of the Iran nuclear deal framework agreement of 2015, between Iran, the P5+1 and the European Union and is engaging in warmongering against North Korea, which can only worsen the situation.