OSLO, Norway — The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday, a forceful show of support for a grassroots organization — which includes the effort of a Northampton doctor — that seeks to pressure the world’s nuclear powers to give up the weapons that could destroy the planet.
Sharing in the award is Leeds resident Dr. Ira Helfand, co-founder and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, who was part of the campaign’s steering committee.
Speaking from his Springfield office, Helfand said he is grateful the Peace Prize committee understands the need to abolish these weapons.
“This helps to emphasize to people how critically important it is to eliminate nuclear weapons from the world’s arsenal,” said Helfand, who is sharing his second Peace Prize.
Helfand is co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which started ICAN seven years ago. That organization won the Peace Prize in 1985.
The Nobel committee cited the tiny, Geneva-based ICAN for its work that led to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was reached in July at the United Nations.
The group “has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world’s nations to pledge to cooperate … in efforts to stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons,” Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said in the announcement.
Helfand said, “The treaty offers us a unique opportunity to transform the discussion about nuclear weapons and move decisively to an agreement among all nuclear powers to eliminate their weapons.”
The award of the $1.1-million prize comes amid heightened tensions over both North Korea’s aggressive development of nuclear weapons and U.S. President Donald Trump’s persistent criticism of the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
The prize committee wanted “to send a signal to North Korea and the U.S. that they need to go into negotiations,” Oeivind Stenersen, a historian of the Peace Prize. “The prize is also coded support to the Iran nuclear deal. I think this was wise because recognizing the Iran deal itself could have been seen as giving support to the Iranian state.”
More than 120 countries approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons over opposition from nuclear-armed countries and their allies. In a statement issued after the Nobel was announced, the U.S. reiterated its position that the treaty “will not result in the elimination of a single nuclear weapon.”
The treaty requires all ratifying countries “never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” It also bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices — and the threat to use such weapons.
The nuclear powers oppose the treaty, which goes well beyond existing nonproliferation agreements, arguing that they alone should have the weapons in order to support stability in the world.
The U.S., Britain and France said the prohibition wouldn’t work and would end up disarming their nations while emboldening what U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley called “bad actors.” They instead suggest strengthening the nonproliferation treaty, which they say has made a significant dent in atomic arsenals.
ICAN, a coalition of 468 nongovernmental groups from over 100 countries, says that argument is outdated.
“This prize is really a tribute to the tireless efforts of many millions of campaigners and concerned citizens worldwide who have, ever since the dawn of the Atomic Age, loudly protested nuclear weapons, insisting that they can serve no legitimate purpose and must be forever banished from the face of our Earth,” said ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn.
The prize is likely to give new momentum to ICAN and its allies in the coming months as the group tries to achieve ratification of the treaty by 50 nations.
That would allow the ban to become binding under international law for those countries and put nuclear-armed states in the uncomfortable position of being outliers.
On Sept. 20, the first day the treaty was open for signatures, 51 countries signed it and three submitted their ratifications. ICAN hopes to get the 50 ratifications by the end of 2018.
All countries with nuclear capacity are not part of the treaty, but Helfand said he believes the Peace Prize can lead to fundamental adjustment in these attitudes, especially as the risk of nuclear war increases.
“What it can do is provide impetus to a broad movement to have nuclear states change their policies,” Helfand said. “The heavy lifting is still ahead, (but) the prize gives us a boost in our efforts.”
For Northampton resident Timmon Wallis, who was at the treaty signing ceremony in New York last month, ICAN earning the Peace Prize will give more publicity to the treaty that otherwise has received little attention around the globe.
“The significance of winning the Peace Prize is the treaty will get more attention,” Wallis said.
Wallis is a member of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, which is a founding member of ICAN, and the author of “Disarming the Nuclear Argument: The Truth About Nuclear Weapons,” as well as the former executive director of the Nonviolent Peaceforce.
“This treaty is the summation of the frustration of where things are going,” Wallis said.
The Nobel prize is likely to help boost ICAN’s advocacy. It also organized events globally in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversaries of the attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.
The committee, citing nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world, said “the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time.”
In 2009, it awarded the prize to President Barack Obama, months after he laid out the U.S. commitment to “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Since then, the U.S. has been a leading voice against the treaty to ban nuclear weapons. The real lobbying battleground could shape up in countries like NATO member states, Japan and South Korea that have military alliances with the U.S., but where activists could be emboldened by the Nobel prize.
The prize “sends a message to all nuclear-armed states and all states that continue to rely on nuclear weapons for security that it is unacceptable behavior. We will not support it, we will not make excuses for it. We can’t threaten to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of security. That’s not how you build security,” ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn told reporters Friday in Geneva.
She said that she “worried that it was a prank” after getting a phone call just minutes before the official Peace Prize announcement was made. Fihn said she didn’t believe it until she heard the name of the group being proclaimed on television.
ICAN leaders later popped open some bubbly to celebrate the prize, and held up a banner with their group’s name in their small Geneva headquarters.
“We are trying to send very strong signals to all states with nuclear arms, nuclear-armed states — North Korea, U.S., Russia, China, France, U.K., Israel, all of them, India, Pakistan — it is unacceptable to threaten to kill civilians,” she said.