The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, better known as Nihon Hidankyo, have always worked behind the scenes to reduce nuclear weapons, U.N. disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu said of this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Whenever there have been international conferences on nuclear disarmament at the United Nations, which brings together diplomats from all over the world, Nihon Hidankyo has always sent its members to convey the voices of hibakusha atomic bomb survivors.
Nihon Hidankyo "has a long relationship with the U.N. disarmament division," Nakamitsu, U.N. under-secretary-general and high representative for disarmament affairs, said in a recent interview.
Their steady activities resulted in the adoption in July 2017 of the first-ever Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which outlaws nuclear weapons.
It was their activities that "inspired countries to create the treaty," she emphasized.
Nakamitsu said that diplomats working in the field of disarmament "have certainly listened attentively to hibakusha's stories."
Moved by their stories, most of these diplomats say they have come to believe that nuclear abolition is an issue they will pursue for the rest of their lives, according to Nakamitsu.
The group won the prize as "there was a sense of crisis that we have to observe the 'nuclear taboo' (that nuclear weapons should never be used)," a principle they established, she said, amid continuing Russian aggression against Ukraine and endless conflicts in the Middle East.
There are fears that momentum toward nuclear disarmament may lose steam in the face of the severe international political climate.
But Nakamitsu believes the moves toward nuclear disarmament will be maintained due to a shared sense of crisis, giving the example of the partial nuclear test ban treaty, which was concluded soon after the confrontation between the United States and then-Soviet Union came close to ending in nuclear war in the 1960s. "We must never give up," she stressed.
Nakamitsu proposed that the Japanese government attend as an observer to a meeting of signatories to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
"Japan, the only country that experienced nuclear attacks in war, can make a contribution" to discussions on support for victims and environmental restoration, she said.
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