ICAN was awarded Nobel Peace Prize today

Today, The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Peace Prize calls "upon nuclear-armed states to initiate negotiations to gradual elimination of the world's 15,000 nuclear weapons," the Nobel committee that awarded the prize said.

"The organization is receiving the award for its work to draw 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 Nobel Peace Prize committee said.



"ICAN has in the past year given the efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons a new direction and new vigour," the committee said. "ICAN has been the leading civil society actor in the effort to achieve a prohibition of nuclear weapons under international law."

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which said in a release that "We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time."