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Nobel Prize for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

Published 6 October 2017

Media release from ACDN
Published in French 6 October 2017

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons. This honours the efforts of some 450 NGOs around the world, whose work led to the adoption on 7 July 2017 of the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons, endorsed by 122 UN member states.

« We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is higher than it has been for a long time. Some countries and modernizing their arsenals, and there is a real danger that more countries will obtain nuclear weapons, as North Korea has shown" said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

« The Committee wishes to stress that the next steps to creating a world without nuclear weapons need to involve the nations that possess them. So this year the Peace Prize is also an appeal to those States, urging them to engage in serious negotiations to lead to the gradual, balanced and carefully controlled disappearance of nearly 15 000 nuclear weapons currently in the world », she explained.

ACDN (Action des Citoyens pour le Désarmement Nucléaire) has worked for nuclear abolition since its foundation in 1996, and has participated actively in this international campaign, initiated in 2007 by some Australian doctors. ACDN salutes this Nobel Prize, which sends a strong message to the 9 states currently holding nuclear weapons (including France and North Korea) and should lead them to renounce, with no exceptions, all these weapons of massacre and crimes against humanity.

A large majority of French citizens (three out of four according to an IFOP poll in October 2015) are in favour of France participating in the abolition of nuclear arms, i.e. their outlawing and complete elimination, under a mutual and international control that is strict and effective. In the last five years, 126 French MPs and Senators signed a bill for organizing a referendum on this question.

The decision of the Nobel Committee proves that this question is more topical than ever.

Contact : Jean-Marie Matagne
Président d’ACDN
Administrateur du Réseau "Sortir du nucléaire"
+33 6 73 50 76 61