Congratulating ICAN on Nobel Peace Prize
The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize will be presented this weekend to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. ICAN is a coalition that includes Quaker Peace & Social Witness.
ICAN's award is in recognition of achieving the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – hailed as a significant step towards a nuclear weapons free world.
Hiroshima survivor and ICAN campaigner Setsuko Thurlow, together with ICAN's executive director, Beatrice Fihn, will accept the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on 10 December on behalf of the campaign.
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To rely on the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent is faithless; to use them is a sin.
- Quakers' Meeting for Sufferings 1955
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Marigold Bentley, Head of Peace Programmes and Faith Relations for QPSW said, “In 1947 Quakers were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Seventy years on, the task before us all to ensure peace today and for future generations continues. Quakers congratulate ICAN as fellow recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize and enjoin with them the call to ban nuclear weapons now and forever."
“Quaker regard for the sanctity of all life leads us to say that all killing is wrong. Our representative body, Meeting for Sufferings declared in 1955 that, 'To rely on the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent is faithless; to use them is a sin'." (Meeting for Sufferings, 1955, Quaker faith & practice 24.41).
The Treaty once ratified will make the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal under international law.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted in July by two-thirds of the 193 UN member states. However, the UK government refused to sign. Now Quakers in Britain, the Methodist Church, The Baptist Union, the Church of Scotland and the United Reformed Church are urging people to press the government to sign and ratify the Treaty.
Urge the government to ratify the Treaty banning nuclear weapons