ASTANA (TCA) — Kazakh artist, Honorary Ambassador of the ATOM Project Karipbek Kuyukov has been announced a winner of the 2018 Nuclear-Free Future Award. The decision of the international jury was published on the website of the Nuclear-Free Future Award Foundation last week. The award ceremony will take place in Salzburg, Austria, this October, the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Together with the Kazakh activist, Jeffrey Lee of Australia and Linda Walker of the United Kingdom will be also awarded. The two other winners of honorable awards are French activist couple, Didier and Paulette Anger, and activist Peter Weish of Austria.
According to the artist, the award is a sign of recognition of the work carried out by Kazakhstan to inform the international community about the threats and consequences of nuclear weapons tests.
“This award is a merit of the whole Kazakhstan! This is an assessment of the enormous and hard work of our country, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the initiator of the ATOM Project. Our Republic, by its own example, has shown how to fight for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament and has helped other states of the world hesitant in the decision to be for or against the nuclear future,” said laureate of the international award Kuyukov.
The ATOM Project (Abolish Testing, Our Mission) is an important initiative of President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev in the field of global nuclear disarmament and public diplomacy. This initiative was voiced at the International Conference titled “From a Nuclear Test Ban to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World” on the International Day against Nuclear Tests of the United Nations, on August 29, 2012, in Astana.
In the six years since the announcement of the ATOM Project, Kazakhstan has carried out substantial work on its promotion both domestically and abroad, including the presentation of the initiative around the world and the organization of exhibitions of paintings by Kuyukov, who himself is a victim of nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk Test Site. At the moment more than 300,000 people from 100 countries of the world signed an online petition of the ATOM Project calling on the leaders of the world to ensure the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
As an active advocate of the prohibition of nuclear tests and, ultimately, of the nuclear disarmament of the world, in 2017 Honorary Ambassador of the ATOM Project Karipbek Kuyukov was invited to the award ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize for the efforts in the destruction of nuclear weapons presented to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
