1985 and 2017
IPPNW is the 1985 Nobel Peace Laureate. The Nobel Peace Committee recognized IPPNW for “considerable service to mankind by spreading authoritative information and by creating an awareness of the catastrophic consequences of atomic warfare.” In his acceptance speech on behalf of IPPNW, founding co-president Dr. Bernard Lown said: “We physicians have focused on the nuclear threat as the singular issue of our era. We are not indifferent to other human rights and hard-won civil liberties. But first we must be able to bequeath to our children the most fundamental of all rights, which preconditions all others: the right to survival.” Joining Dr. Lown at the podium was founding co-president Dr. Evgueni Chazov, who said: “True to the Hippocratic Oath, we cannot keep silent knowing what final epidemic—nuclear war—can bring to humankind. The bell of Hiroshima rings in our hearts not as a funeral knell, but as an alarm bell calling out to actions to protect life on our planet.”
IPPNW also received the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1984.
Award ceremony speeches by founding co-presidents Bernard Lown and Evgueni Chazov
Profile of IPPNW in the Helix magazine
IPPNW shares the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to ICAN—the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. IPPNW launched ICAN in 2007 and is a member of the campaign’s international steering group. ICAN was named the 2017 Peace Laureate “”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.”
Nobel Committee’s press release
Award ceremony speech by Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee