Local Focus: Kiwi among Nobel Peace Prize winners

A Palmerston North man has been recognised with a Nobel Peace Prize after dedicating more than a decade to disarming weapons of mass distruction.

Thomas Nash is part of a wider group called International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which received the Nobel Peace Prize for recognition of survivors of nuclear weapons, campaigners and civil society organisations around the world.

Nash co-founded Article 36 - a non-profit, UK-based organisation which directs ICAN on where to focus its efforts. He left the organisation in January this year, returning to New Zealan for the Green Party in his hometown of Palmerston North.

"We helped plan the strategy for an international treaty at the UN which was achieved in September of this year, when it was open to signature.

"I'm happy to say New Zealand was one of the first countries to sign it and so I'm really stoked that the Nobel Committee has recognised the work of the international campaign with this years Nobel Peace Prize," Nash says.

Nash has spent his life campaigning and fighting for peace.

"I've been interested in disarmament ever since I was a little kid growing up here in Palmy

"When I was at Freyberg High School, I went on a trip to protest against French nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1995.. Since then I've been really interested in disarmament."

It's a fight which has taken him around the world. Nash spent time as a New Zealand Government representative at the United Nations in Geneva. And successfully spearheaded an international treaty to ban cluster bombs.

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