An influential anti-nuclear campaign group has won the 2017 Nobel peace prize, in a decision that underlines the mounting danger of nuclear conflict amid simmering tensions between the US and North Korea and the increasing vulnerability of the Iran nuclear deal.  The chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said the award to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) had been made in recognition of the group’s 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”.

The committee’s choice amounts to a reprimand to the world’s nine nuclear-armed powers, all of whom boycotted negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons – approved at the United Nations in July – and who described the treaty as dangerous.

The treaty was endorsed by 122 countries at the UN headquarters in New York after months of talks. None of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons – the US, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – took part. The treaty will only be enforced when 50 countries have signed and ratified it, a process that could take months or years. The committee said its decision came at time when “the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time”.(theguardian)…[+]