Nobel Peace Prize 2017: ICAN and the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons

This note covers the Nobel Peace Prize 2017: who won it, what the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) did to earn the award, the background of the nuclear weapons debate, how the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came about, why the Norwegian Nobel Committee chose ICAN, how the campaign developed over time, why the prize matters and quick facts for exams.

What was the Nobel Peace Prize 2017 awarded for?

The Nobel Peace Prize 2017 went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons "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".

In plain words, the committee honoured ICAN for two linked things. First, it kept reminding governments and ordinary people that a nuclear war would cause suffering on a scale that no state could manage or justify, whichever side used the weapons.

Second, it pushed, year after year, for a binding international law that would make nuclear weapons illegal in the same way landmines, cluster bombs and chemical and biological weapons are already illegal.

The award is formally called the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the five original prizes created in Alfred Nobel's will, and it is decided each year by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo rather than by a Swedish institution.

Who are the laureates?

Unlike most Nobel categories, which usually go to individuals, the 2017 Peace Prize was given to an organisation rather than a named person. The whole prize of 9,000,000 Swedish kronor went to this one coalition.

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

ICAN was founded in 2007 in Australia, on the initiative of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, itself a 1985 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

By the time of the 2017 award, ICAN was based in Geneva and worked as a loose coalition of partner groups active in over a hundred countries, including Norway. It received the whole prize (share 1/1).

ICAN's contribution was to organise ordinary citizens, doctors, lawyers and smaller non-governmental organisations into a single, coordinated voice demanding a treaty-based ban on nuclear weapons, instead of leaving the question only to the governments that already possess such weapons.

What problem was the world facing with nuclear weapons?

By 2017, the committee noted that the chance of nuclear weapons being used was higher than it had been in a long time. Some nuclear-armed states were modernising their arsenals, and there was concern that more countries would try to acquire nuclear weapons, with North Korea given as an example.

The committee pointed out a specific legal gap: the international community had already agreed binding treaties banning landmines, cluster munitions, and biological and chemical weapons, because of the unacceptable suffering these weapons cause to civilians.

Nuclear weapons, although far more destructive than any of these, had not yet been made the subject of a similar worldwide legal prohibition.

The presentation speech added historical weight to this problem by recalling the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which instantly killed at least 140,000 people, most of them civilians, with the death toll continuing to rise for years afterwards as survivors suffered the effects of radiation.

At the same time, the speech acknowledged that global military power still rests on a balance of nuclear deterrence, where nuclear-armed states argue that possessing such weapons prevents war between them. The committee said this claim is "highly debatable" and cannot be proven with certainty.

The speech also explained how the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty had tried to manage this risk: it gave formal legal status to five nuclear-weapon states, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China, while every other country that joined pledged not to acquire such weapons. In exchange, the recognised nuclear powers promised to negotiate in good faith towards disarmament, a dual pledge the speech called the "very core" of the treaty.

The speech noted that this bargain had been only partly kept, pointing to a 2000 NPT Review Conference statement calling for "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament". It also observed that India, Pakistan and Israel, all holding nuclear weapons, had never joined the NPT, and that North Korea had carried out six nuclear test explosions after withdrawing from the treaty, which the nuclear powers cited as a reason for not disarming faster.

What is ICAN and what did it do to achieve a nuclear weapons ban?

ICAN worked as a civil society campaign rather than a government body. Its central argument was humanitarian, not purely political: any use of nuclear weapons would cause unacceptable human suffering, so the weapons themselves should be made illegal, just as other inhumane weapons already are.

The presentation speech described ICAN as a loose coalition of 468 non-governmental organisations from more than one hundred countries, and said its foundation had also drawn inspiration from the 1997 Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams and her International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

What was the Humanitarian Pledge?

One of ICAN's key tools was the Humanitarian Pledge, a voluntary national commitment initiated by the Austrian Government in December 2014, by which states promised to work to stigmatise, prohibit and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.

ICAN campaigned hard for governments to sign this pledge, and by the time of the award, 127 states had done so.

ICAN also took part in planning several inter-governmental conferences that focused attention on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences a nuclear war would cause. This work helped lead the United Nations General Assembly to adopt a 2016 resolution starting negotiations on a legal prohibition of nuclear weapons.

The Nobel press release and the committee both described ICAN as a coalition of non-governmental organisations from around 100 different countries, acting as the leading civil-society force behind the push for a prohibition treaty under international law.

The presentation speech explained why ICAN's founders felt this work was necessary: in their view, the recognised nuclear powers were not fulfilling their disarmament pledges under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, so civil society had to supplement that treaty with fresh legal initiatives rather than wait indefinitely for the existing powers to act on their own.

What does the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons say?

ICAN's main achievement was helping bring about the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. According to the press release, on 7 July 2017, 122 of the UN member states adopted this treaty, which prohibits its member states from developing, acquiring, stockpiling or using nuclear weapons.

The treaty was not yet legally binding at the time of the award. The committee explained that it would enter into force and become binding under international law for its member states only once 50 states had ratified it.

The facts page notes that no nuclear-armed states and no NATO countries supported the treaty, and that among Nordic countries only Sweden voted for it.

The table below sets out the five states that are legally recognised as nuclear-weapon states under an older treaty, the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which remains the main existing law on this subject.

The press release stressed that the ban treaty alone would not remove a single nuclear weapon, and that the next real steps have to involve the nuclear-armed states themselves, who the committee called upon to begin "serious negotiations" toward gradually and verifiably eliminating the roughly 15,000 nuclear weapons that existed in the world.

Why did the Norwegian Nobel Committee choose ICAN?

The committee tied its choice directly to Alfred Nobel's will, which sets three criteria for the Peace Prize: promoting fraternity between nations, advancing disarmament and arms control, and holding or promoting peace congresses.

It said ICAN satisfied all three: it worked vigorously for nuclear disarmament, ICAN and a majority of UN member states helped build fraternity between nations through the Humanitarian Pledge, and its support for the UN treaty negotiations amounted, in the committee's words, to the modern equivalent of an international peace congress.

The presentation speech placed the award inside a longer tradition: twelve Peace Prizes had already been given, wholly or partly, for work against nuclear proliferation or for disarmament, starting with Philip Noel-Baker in 1959 and most recently Barack Obama in 2009, before ICAN in 2017.

Sketch a simple staircase with four steps labelled, from bottom to top: "humanitarian harm shown," "Humanitarian Pledge signed by states," "UN treaty negotiated and adopted (7 July 2017)," and "treaty enters into force once 50 states ratify it." This shows the path ICAN worked along.

The committee named two individuals on the award podium as representatives of the wider ICAN movement: Setsuko Thurlow, who was thirteen years old during the bombing of Hiroshima and has devoted her life to describing that suffering, and Beatrice Fihn, ICAN's Executive Director, who was described as uniting many organisations behind one goal.

The presentation speech also recalled earlier moments in the long history of disarmament diplomacy. It mentioned the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, where Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan came close to agreeing to abolish all long-range nuclear missiles, and quoted a statement Reagan had made a year and a half before Reykjavik, telling the American and Soviet peoples that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, closed her speech by quoting Pope Francis, who had said nuclear weapons "create nothing but a false sense of security," a view the committee said it shared.

How did the work to ban nuclear weapons develop?

ICAN's campaign did not appear suddenly in 2017; it built on decades of earlier disarmament efforts and treaties against other inhumane weapons. The table below traces the main stages mentioned in the Nobel sources.

Note: the press release records 122 states adopting the treaty on 7 July 2017, while the award ceremony speech gives a slightly different figure of 129 states endorsing the final draft on that date; both numbers come from official Nobel pages and are kept here as printed.

Why does this prize matter?

The prize matters first because it recognised that ordinary citizens and small organisations, not only governments, can shift how the world talks about weapons of mass destruction.

The committee said ICAN "succeeded in generating fresh engagement among ordinary people," turning a highly technical, government-dominated subject into one the general public felt entitled to an opinion on.

It also matters because the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was, at the time, the first comprehensive attempt since 1970 to create new binding international law specifically outlawing nuclear weapons, rather than only limiting their spread.

The committee called the award "also a call" on nuclear-armed states to start serious negotiations toward eliminating their arsenals.

Open questions remain, exactly as the sources describe them: the treaty needed 50 ratifications before becoming binding, none of the states that actually possess nuclear weapons supported it, and the committee itself admitted that a legal ban "will not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon." The real test, as the committee framed it, is whether nuclear-armed states eventually honour the disarmament promise they already made under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Was the push to ban nuclear weapons controversial?

The presentation speech was direct about this: it said ICAN's campaign for a global ban "is not uncontroversial" and acknowledged that the treaty "has powerful opponents". No state that actually possesses nuclear weapons, and no member of NATO, supported the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and among the Nordic countries only Sweden voted in favour.

The speech compared this resistance to the arguments once used against banning biological and chemical weapons, cluster weapons and landmines, noting that those prohibitions nevertheless became reality and that using such weapons is now widely treated as a taboo.

It also acknowledged a genuine practical difficulty: disarming of nuclear weapons is harder than disarming of these other weapon types, and the five legally recognised nuclear-weapon states under the NPT, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China, had so far honoured their 1970 disarmament commitment only "to a limited degree".

The committee's own text recognised the risk that human error, equipment failure, or even hostile hacking of control systems could lead to catastrophe despite advanced safety mechanisms, which it used to argue that the only responsible course was to keep working for the removal and eventual destruction of nuclear weapons.

At the same time, the speech insisted that ICAN was neither naive nor unrealistic: it recognised that nuclear-armed states cannot eliminate their weapons overnight, and that any real disarmament has to happen through a mutual, gradual and verifiable process, with international legal pressure and public engagement used to speed that process along rather than replace it.

Quick facts for exams

The Nobel Peace Prize 2017 was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an organisation founded in 2007 in Australia and based in Geneva.

The award was announced on 6 October 2017 by the Norwegian Nobel Committee and the ceremony was held in Oslo on 10 December 2017.

ICAN received the whole prize for drawing attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts toward a treaty-based prohibition.

Its work fed directly into the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by 122 UN member states on 7 July 2017. The prize amount was 9,000,000 Swedish kronor.

Note: Source. The prize facts in this note are from the Nobel Prize's official site, nobelprize.org.

Glossary

• Nobel Peace Prize — one of the five original prizes from Alfred Nobel's will, awarded for work on peace or disarmament by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
• ICAN — the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of civil society groups founded in 2007 in Australia.
• Humanitarian Pledge — a voluntary national commitment, started by Austria in 2014, to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.
• Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons — a 2017 UN treaty that bans its member states from making, acquiring, stockpiling or using nuclear weapons.
• Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) — a 1970 treaty limiting which states may legally hold nuclear weapons and committing them to disarmament talks.
• Nuclear-weapon state — under the NPT, one of five states (USA, Russia, UK, France, China) legally recognised as holding nuclear weapons.
• Deterrence — the idea that possessing nuclear weapons prevents attack by threatening unacceptable retaliation.
• Ratification — the formal act by which a state agrees to be legally bound by a treaty it has already signed.
• Civil society — organisations and citizens acting outside government, such as the NGOs that make up ICAN.
• Non-governmental organisation (NGO) — a voluntary group not run by any government, often working on a social or humanitarian cause.
• Disarmament — the process of reducing or eliminating weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction.
• Executive Director — the senior official who runs an organisation's day-to-day work, the role held by Beatrice Fihn at ICAN.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: The 2017 Peace Prize was given to a person. Correct: It was given entirely to ICAN, an organisation, not to any named individual.
• Misconception: The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons immediately banned nuclear weapons worldwide. Correct: It only becomes binding, and only for its own member states, once 50 states ratify it.
• Misconception: All nuclear-armed states supported the 2017 treaty. Correct: The facts page states no nuclear powers or NATO countries supported it, and only Sweden among Nordic states voted for it.
• Misconception: ICAN was founded by governments. Correct: It was founded by civil society groups, prompted by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
• Misconception: The Nobel Committee claimed the prize alone would remove nuclear weapons. Correct: The committee explicitly said a legal prohibition "will not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon."
• Misconception: This was the first Peace Prize ever linked to nuclear disarmament. Correct: The committee said twelve earlier prizes, from Philip Noel-Baker in 1959 to Barack Obama in 2009, had already touched this theme.
• Misconception: The Humanitarian Pledge is a binding treaty. Correct: It is described as a voluntary national commitment, separate from the later prohibition treaty.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. In which year was ICAN founded, and in which country? [1 mark]

1. ICAN was founded in 2007 in Australia, on the initiative of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Q2. State the official citation for the Nobel Peace Prize 2017. [2 marks]

1. The prize was given "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."

Q3. Explain the Humanitarian Pledge and its purpose. [4 marks]

1. The Humanitarian Pledge was a voluntary national commitment initiated by the Austrian Government in December 2014.
2. States that signed it promised to work to stigmatise, prohibit and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.
3. ICAN campaigned actively to win support for the pledge among governments around the world.
4. By the time of the 2017 award, 127 states had made this commitment, showing broad diplomatic support for banning nuclear weapons even before the formal treaty existed.

Q4. What three criteria from Alfred Nobel's will did the committee say ICAN satisfied? [4 marks]

1. Nobel's will sets three criteria for the Peace Prize: promoting fraternity between nations, advancing disarmament and arms control, and holding or promoting peace congresses.
2. The committee said ICAN worked vigorously to achieve nuclear disarmament, satisfying the second criterion directly.
3. It said ICAN and a majority of UN member states built fraternity between nations through the Humanitarian Pledge.
4. It said ICAN's support for the UN treaty negotiations was, in today's terms, equivalent to holding an international peace congress.

Q5. Describe the legal gap that the Norwegian Nobel Committee said ICAN helped to fill. [5 marks]

1. The committee explained that the international community had already adopted binding prohibitions against landmines, cluster munitions, and biological and chemical weapons.
2. These bans existed because such weapons cause unacceptable harm and suffering to civilian populations.
3. Nuclear weapons, although far more destructive than any of these, had not yet been made the subject of a similar worldwide legal prohibition.
4. ICAN worked to fill this gap by arguing on humanitarian grounds that any use of nuclear weapons would cause unacceptable suffering.
5. Its efforts fed into the negotiation and adoption, on 7 July 2017, of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which directly addresses this legal gap for the states that join it.

Q6. Discuss the limits the Nobel Committee itself placed on what the 2017 prize could achieve. [6 marks]

1. The committee openly said that an international legal prohibition "will not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon."
2. It noted that, so far, neither the states that already have nuclear weapons nor their closest allies supported the ban treaty.
3. It stressed that the next real steps toward a world free of nuclear weapons had to involve the nuclear-armed states themselves, not only civil society.
4. The committee called the prize "also a call" upon these states to begin serious negotiations toward gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of roughly 15,000 nuclear weapons worldwide.
5. It pointed out that the five NPT-recognised nuclear-weapon states, the USA, Russia, the UK, France and China, had already committed to this goal through the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, but had only partly honoured that disarmament commitment.
6. Taken together, these statements show the committee treated the prize as encouragement and pressure on existing powers, not as proof that disarmament had been achieved.

Q7. Who were Setsuko Thurlow and Beatrice Fihn, and why were they mentioned at the award ceremony? [3 marks]

1. Setsuko Thurlow was thirteen years old when she experienced the bombing of Hiroshima, and she has devoted her life to describing that suffering.
2. Beatrice Fihn was ICAN's Executive Director, responsible for uniting different organisations and groups behind the campaign's common goal.
3. Both were named on the award podium as outstanding representatives of the wider ICAN movement, standing in for the many individuals and organisations behind the campaign.

Key takeaways

• The Nobel Peace Prize 2017 went entirely to ICAN, a civil society coalition, not to any individual person.
• ICAN was founded in 2007 in Australia and was based in Geneva at the time of the award.
• The citation praised ICAN's work on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and its push for a treaty-based ban.
• The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by 122 UN member states on 7 July 2017.
• The ban treaty needed 50 ratifications before it would become binding, and no nuclear-armed state supported it.
• The committee linked the award directly to the three Peace Prize criteria named in Alfred Nobel's will.
• The committee repeatedly stressed that a legal ban alone would not remove existing nuclear weapons from the world.
• Setsuko Thurlow and Beatrice Fihn represented ICAN at the Oslo ceremony on 10 December 2017.

Test yourself

In which year was ICAN founded?

ICAN was founded in 2007, prompted by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Where was ICAN based at the time of the 2017 award?

ICAN's headquarters were in Geneva, with partner organisations across more than one hundred countries.

What date was the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted?

The treaty was adopted on 7 July 2017, when 122 United Nations member states voted in favour of it.

How many states needed to ratify the treaty for it to become binding?

Fifty states needed to ratify the treaty before it would enter into force and bind its member states.

What was the Humanitarian Pledge and who started it?

It was a voluntary commitment to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons, started by the Austrian Government in December 2014.

Name the five states recognised as nuclear-weapon states under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty.

They are the United States of America, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China.

Who represented ICAN on the podium at the Oslo award ceremony?

Setsuko Thurlow, a Hiroshima survivor, and Beatrice Fihn, ICAN's Executive Director, represented the movement.

How much prize money came with the Nobel Peace Prize 2017?

The prize carried 9,000,000 Swedish kronor, which went entirely to ICAN since it received the whole prize.