(Stockholm, 11 October 2024) SIPRI congratulates Nihon Hidankyo on the award of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, ‘for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again’.
Nihon Hidankyo is a confederation of organizations of the Hibakusha, the surviving victims of the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
‘I am delighted that the Hibakusha have been honoured this year with the Nobel Peace Prize. As the Soviet and US presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan said in 1985, “Nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.” The Hibakusha remind us of that truth every day,’ said SIPRI Director Dan Smith.
‘The slogan at the National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims in Nagasaki is: “The bomb on Nagasaki was the second time a nuclear weapon was used in war: let it be the last!” We can only agree with that sentiment.’
‘With this award the Norwegian Nobel Committee has scored a triple strike: it has drawn attention to the human impact of nuclear weapons, to the dangers of the present day, but also to the fact that we have managed to get by without using nuclear weapons for 80 years. The nuclear taboo held through several moments of high tension during the cold war. But relations between the USA and Russia and their respective allies are today at their most toxic since the cold war.’
‘It is an extremely worrying sign that while the number of nuclear weapons has been going down since the end of the cold war, the number of deployed nuclear weapons is actually rising again.’
‘In January 2022 the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council—China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA—reiterated the Gorbachev–Reagan statement and emphasized the importance of avoiding military confrontations and a nuclear arms race. Anyone might ask, where have those fine words gone?’
‘It is of the utmost importance that we maintain the nuclear taboo. The Hibakusha and organizations like Nihon Hidankyo play a crucial role.’
Nuclear arsenals being strengthened around the world
SIPRI launched its annual assessment of the state of armaments, disarmament and international security in June 2024. Key findings of SIPRI Yearbook 2024 are that the number and types of nuclear weapons in development have increased as states deepen their reliance on nuclear deterrence.
The nine nuclear-armed states—the USA, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued to modernize their nuclear arsenals and several deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023.
Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12 121 warheads in January 2024, about 9585 were in military stockpiles for potential use. An estimated 3904 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft—60 more than in January 2023—and the rest were in central storage. Around 2100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles. Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the USA, but for the first time China is believed to have some warheads on high operational alert.
Click here to explore a map of global nuclear weapon numbers as at the start of 2024.
About the SIPRI Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme
The Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Programme at SIPRI seeks to contribute to the understanding of trends and developments pertaining to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. It considers their implications for an increasingly complex security landscape and seeks to identify approaches to address the risks and challenges WMD pose. To this end, the Programme examines the political, institutional, legal and technical aspects of WMD governance, focusing on international efforts at arms control and disarmament, materials security and non-proliferation, and risk reduction.