Nobel Peace Prize awarded to anti-nuclear weapons group

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

The organization received the award “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,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said Friday.

“We live in a world where the risk for nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time. Some states are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, and there is real danger that more countries will try to procure nuclear weapons, as exemplified by North Korea,” she said.

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The award comes amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, which conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test last month. 

The tensions, marked by an escalating war of words between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, has fueled concerns that the U.S. and North Korea could be nearing a confrontation. 

Reiss-Andersen urged nuclear-armed states on Wednesday to begin negotiating the gradual elimination of their weapons.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was instrumental in pushing for a United Nations resolution adopted earlier this year that called for the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons. None of the world’s nine known nuclear-armed states, however, got behind the resolution.