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2017 Nobel Peace Prize: What is ICAN?

Geneva-based group pushes for a UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons, but world nuclear powers have refused to sign up.

    The Geneva-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Sunday.

    ICAN has been at the forefront of pushing for an end to the use of nuclear weapons through the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which has 50 signatories including Brazil, South Africa and Vietnam to date.

    The Nobel committee cited ICAN's efforts "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition on such weapons", in an announcement in Oslo, Nowary on October 6.




    Banning nukes

    In a landmark resolution, 123 countries voted to start talks on a "legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons" in the First Committee of the UN General Assembly in October 2016.







    Strength in numbers

    Before the Nobel committee's announcement, ICAN was a little-known organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland.


    International partners include peace organisations to humanitarian and environmental groups.





    Its roots




    Call for global responsibility 


    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres congratulated the campaign, saying "now more than ever we need a world without nuclear weapons". 







    Iran has denied it is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme and said it would continue to abide by the deal. The UN nuclear monitor also said that Iran is in compliance with the deal.

    Trump has also threatened "to destroy North Korea" if necessary after its leader Kim Jong-un said that nothing could stop his country from acquiring ballistic missiles with the capability of carrying nuclear warheads.


    SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies


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