Stockholm, Oct. 6(Greenpost)–The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). 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.
We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time. Some states are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, and there is a real danger that more countries will try to procure nuclear weapons, as exemplified by North Korea. Nuclear weapons pose a constant threat to humanity and all life on earth. Through binding international agreements, the international community has previously adopted prohibitions against land mines, cluster munitions and biological and chemical weapons. Nuclear weapons are even more destructive, but have not yet been made the object of a similar international legal prohibition.
Through its work, ICAN has helped to fill this legal gap. An important argument in the rationale for prohibiting nuclear weapons is the unacceptable human suffering that a nuclear war will cause. ICAN is a coalition of non-governmental organizations from around 100 different countries around the globe. The coalition has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world’s nations to pledge to cooperate with all relevant stakeholders in efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. To date, 108 states have made such a commitment, known as the Humanitarian Pledge.
Furthermore, ICAN has been the leading civil society actor in the endeavour to achieve a prohibition of nuclear weapons under international law. On 7 July 2017, 122 of the UN member states acceded to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As soon as the treaty has been ratified by 50 states, the ban on nuclear weapons will enter into force and will be binding under international law for all the countries that are party to the treaty.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is aware that an international legal prohibition will not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon, and that so far neither the states that already have nuclear weapons nor their closest allies support the nuclear weapon ban treaty. The Committee wishes to emphasize that the next steps towards attaining a world free of nuclear weapons must involve the nuclear-armed states. This year’s Peace Prize is therefore also a call upon these states to initiate serious negotiations with a view to the gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of the almost 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Five of the states that currently have nuclear weapons – the USA, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China – have already committed to this objective through their accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1970. The Non-Proliferation Treaty will remain the primary international legal instrument for promoting nuclear disarmament and preventing the further spread of such weapons.
It is now 71 years since the UN General Assembly, in its very first resolution, advocated the importance of nuclear disarmament and a nuclear weapon-free world. With this year’s award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to pay tribute to ICAN for giving new momentum to the efforts to achieve this goal.
The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has a solid grounding in Alfred Nobel’s will. The will specifies three different criteria for awarding the Peace Prize: the promotion of fraternity between nations, the advancement of disarmament and arms control and the holding and promotion of peace congresses. ICAN works vigorously to achieve nuclear disarmament. ICAN and a majority of UN member states have contributed to fraternity between nations by supporting the Humanitarian Pledge. And through its inspiring and innovative support for the UN negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons, ICAN has played a major part in bringing about what in our day and age is equivalent to an international peace congress.
It is the firm conviction of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that ICAN, more than anyone else, has in the past year given the efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons a new direction and new vigour.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to theInternational Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) “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”.
As usual, Nobel Laureates were interviewed by the Nobel Media right after the announcement.
The phone call reached Hall’s home.
“You’ve reached me where I’ve lived for many years in the middle of nowhere, Maine, rural Maine. Also known as Central Maine. In the extreme north east of this great country of ours. It is physically beautiful, including, I’m looking out the window, it’s a very beautiful day today, which is often is. Not quite yet but it’s still green as can be but it’s, because Maine is not like Arizona.
What is Hall’s reaction to the prize?
JH: Yes, correct. That was about half of our work, during my time when I was employed, had to do with circadian rhythms, indeed. That became amongst our most well-known research achievements, if any. Usually, and, relentlessly co-authored with Rosbash with whom you’ve already spoken. So he and I joined forces in the early mid-eighties and imagined that we might, or we might not as the case may be, go onward and upward doing research together in that arena. Which often involved crucially, what I call AIs – actual investigators – like students, post-doctoral supervisees, from the two labs working very closely together, even day by day. So that was enjoyable, it wasn’t that either lab was way out on its own limb. We had a lot of mutual support, I think it’s fair to say.
Hall and Rosbath were actually teaching in the same university.
JH: This was based in large part on becoming close personally at the beginning where our research interests in very general terms were in genetics, writ large. It was only after six, seven, or eight years that we started to work things together and imagine that possibly our backgrounds and our skills, if any, might be complementary. The key reason that we got into that kind of relationship was because we were personally close. We had mutual interest in low culture stuff like sports and rock and roll music and abusable substances and stuff. And so we spent a lot of time just carousing or sitting together in misery at local sports stadiums. We have also certain, many similar interests, even in the pre-rhythm research days. He as a molecular geneticist, I as a straight up fruit fly geneticist.
AS: And that brings us onto flies. We should say a word for flies on this day of all days because once again the power of the fly as a model organism has been demonstrated.
JH: That’s right, this is something I’ve always … I was taught when I was a graduate student about a phrase, it’s known as the law of drosophila. To know about the deep history going all the way back to the 1920s, and the 40s and the 90s and now the second decade of the current century. It’s just one of a zillion examples of how basic research on a supposedly irrelevant organism can have broader significance than, with regard to what’s going on in terms of that organism itself. And this has been true of fruit fly research, which has been a major contributor for decades. For well over a century actually. The key fourth awardee here is, as some of us call them, the little fly. So the little flies deserve another tip of the hat, I think, in terms of what has happened today.
When Michael Young was interviewed, he was busy answering phone calls.
M Young: I don’t know. Somehow, somehow, it’s just all spinning around in my head that this has happened. You know about these things and you can see possibilities on the horizon but you never really…Has this really happened?! [Laughs.] I’m still at that stage.
I mean this was … You know, I had gone to Stanford to learn how to use this technology, it was brand new in the 70s. And starting up my lab at Rockefeller I had worked a little bit on this problem, circadian rhythms, thanks to these tremendous mutants that Seymour Benzer and his student Ron Konopka had found. And I just thought it was a terrific problem and maybe the toughest thing I could try to tackle because it was behaviour; you know, what could we learn about a fairly complicated behaviour that we all exhibit, which was most easily represented by sleep wake cycles. And frankly I thought we might find out maybe a little bit. I never thought we would really understand what the motor behind this was, at the time. We were very lucky, we managed to find genes that fit together like puzzle pieces to explain how this thing worked. And the techniques and the approaches kept changing and I kept … I was very lucky I kept getting students and post docs that were extremely good and just did everything right. And the other piece of this was, you know, there was sort of a race going on in the early years. My colleagues Jeff Hall and Michael Rosbash and we kind of pushed each other along because … I mean most of it was independently done but we did have to collaborate from time to time, but we worked on slightly different problems but the solutions to those problems all, as I was saying, fit together like puzzle pieces, that kind of bring the picture into view. It was, it’s been really quite satisfying. This really pushes it way, way, over the top. It’s really quite incredible. And I couldn’t … yeah, this is terribly exciting as you can imagine.
桂大使为黄继颁奖。
净杆第一名是夏海龙。桂大使为其颁奖。
最近杆获奖者是周民伟，最远杆获奖者是张玉梅。夫妻双双获奖，使馆领事部主任王昌宁为他们颁奖。
胡平以94杆的成绩获得总干第二名。瑞典华人工商联合总会会长王建荣为其颁奖。
何磊获得净杆第二名，瑞典华人总会执行会长叶沛群为其颁奖。
Anna Wang获得总杆第三名。瑞京华人协会会长柳少惠为其颁奖。
张巧伟获得净杆第三名，瑞典青田同乡会会长叶克雄为其颁奖。张巧伟说，尽管是第三名，但这是他第一次获奖，感到非常高兴。
鼓励奖由青田同乡会副会长夏海栋获得，常务副会长张少华为其颁奖。
出席颁奖仪式的还有使馆政务参赞李军峰，瑞典华人总会副会长伍王令，瑞典华人工商联副会长季展友，瑞典温州商会会长吴俊博，畅通国际总经理李凯和中国侨联海外青年委员徐力等。
