Two women, spanning generations and cultures, accepted the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, presented by a third woman, Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The prize, which was announced on October 6, went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). ICAN received the award, said Reiss-Andersen, “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.” The prize was accepted by ICAN’s 34-year old executive director, Beatrice Fihn of Sweden, and 85-year old hibakusha, Setsuko Thurlow of Japan, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In her acceptance remarks, Fihn thanked the many thousands of members of ICAN and others who made the win possible, saying that “we represent the only rational choice. We represent those who refuse to accept nuclear weapons as a fixture in our world, those who refuse to have their fates bound up in a few lines of launch code.” Thurlow, who was 13 at the time of the Hiroshima bombing, spoke vividly of the horrors she witnessed. “Today, I want you to feel in this hall the presence of all those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” she said. “I want you to feel, above and around us, a great cloud of a quarter million souls. Each person had a name. Each person was loved by someone. Let us ensure that their deaths were not in vain.” Watch the entire ceremony.