24 Japanese High School Students To Be Decorated With 2025 Arms Control Person(s) Of The Year Award.

Washington DC; January 2026: A group of 24 Japanese High School students serving as “Peace Messengers” for the elimination of nuclear weapons were selected as the winners of the 2025 Arms Control Person(s) of the Year contest through a recent online voting process that engaged thousands of participants from more than 63 countries.

The students were nominated for their advocacy against nuclear weapons and their delivery of 110,000 signatures for world peace to the United Nations. Ami Nagato, a 16-year-old student at Fukuyama Akenohoshi Girls’ Senior High School in Hiroshima Prefecture, handed the signatures to U.N. officials on behalf of her cohort. “I want people to know the devastation from the nuclear attacks and tell them about the importance of peace”, Nagato had reiterated to The Japan Times in September 2025.

Since the student peace messenger program started in 1998, more than 2.83 million signatures have been collected. This year’s student peace messengers were chosen from 18 prefectures in Japan. “Looking at the recent state of world affairs, we feel that the threat of nuclear weapons is not diminishing, but rather intensifying”, the students told the Arms Control Association after being notified of their win.

“However, precisely because of these challenging times, we must stand on the principle of humanism: that nuclear weapons do not distinguish borders and will endanger countless citizens. Individually, our impact as high school students may seem limited, and sometimes we feel helpless. Yet, we have continued our work believing in our motto: Our impact may be small, but we are not powerless”, they emphasised.

Their advocacy for peace and disarmament last year coincided with the 80th anniversary of the devastating U.S. atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the end of 1945, an estimated 140,000 were killed by the blast, heat, and radiation effects of the nuclear attacks. As of August 2025, the registers of both atomic bombings’ victims exceed 540,000, including those who died after suffering from the long-term effects of radiation, according to the ICRC.

“As the number of hibakusha, or nuclear bomb survivors, dwindles over time, the leadership of young activists in recalling the catastrophic humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons and pressing for disarmament becomes more important”, said Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association.

“To ensure that the lasting suffering experienced by the Hibakusha is never repeated, we will continue to unite with our peers. Finally, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who has warmly supported us, and to my fellow Peace Messengers who have walked this path with us. Thank you very much”, the students concluded in their statement.

“Grassroots engagement and activism of young people in Japan and elsewhere around the world elevates awareness of the catastrophic risks posed by nuclear weapons, encourages progress for peaceful solutions, and is critical to advancing global efforts for disarmament and international security”, said ACA’s Policy and Program Associate, Libby Flatoff.

ACA’s staff and Board of Directors nominated eight individuals and institutions for the honour of ACPOY 2025. Each of the nominees helped to advance disarmament, nuclear security, and international peace in unique and important ways.

This year’s second runner-up is the UN Delegation of Mexico and 5 other co-sponsoring states. The delegation successfully introduced and won approval for the first-ever United Nations First Committee resolution A/C.1/80L/L.56 on “possible risks of integration of artificial intelligence into command, control and communication systems of nuclear weapons”.

Close behind in the voting, which was open from Dec. 12, 2025, until Jan. 12, 2026, were the group of Catholic Cardinals and Bishops from Japan, South Korea, and the United States who were nominated for their pilgrimage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings, where they challenged the morality of nuclear deterrence and called for renewed action on disarmament.

The Nominees for 2025 were:

• The director, Kathryn Bigelow, and screenwriter, Noah Oppenheim, of the Netflix feature-length film, “A House of Dynamite” for providing millions of viewers a realistic, inside look at the dangerous paradoxes and flaws of the system of nuclear deterrence as it might play out in one of the several potential crises that could erupt in the present day. The film shows how, in a real-world nuclear crisis, the answers are never clear, decisions are all always rushed, and the options are all very, very bad.

• The UN Delegation of Mexico and 5 other co-sponsoring states for successfully introducing and advancing a first-ever United Nations First Committee resolution A/C.1/80L/L.56 on “possible risks of integration of artificial intelligence into command, control and communication systems of nuclear weapons”. It was approved 115-8 with 44 abstentions. The resolution seeks to diminish this risk by encouraging member states to jointly explore the unique dangers created by the integration of AI into nuclear launch systems. It also calls on the nuclear-armed states to take immediate steps to ensure that humans, not machines, exercise ultimate control over the use of nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia were among the handful of “no” votes. Many experts, including former military officials, have warned that the unrestrained integration of AI into nuclear command and control systems could result in the “poisoning” of nuclear decision-making systems by false or corrupted data, leading to hasty or misguided nuclear launch decisions. (See ACT, September 2025.)

• The Nevada State Legislature for its unanimous approval on May 22, 2025, of a bipartisan resolution in support of the nuclear test ban. Amid calls from some in Washington to resume nuclear explosive testing, Assembly Joint Resolution 13 calls on the federal government to maintain a 33-year U.S. test moratorium. Beginning in January 1951, Nevada was the site of 928 of the United States’ 1,054 nuclear test explosions. The strong bipartisan support shows that Nevadans across the state, no matter their party consider resumed testing is a threat to the state’s economy and environment, the health of its residents, and national and global security.

• Catholic Cardinals and Bishops from Japan, South Korea, and the United States for their pilgrimage of peace to Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of the two cities in August. The U.S. delegation included Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago; Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C.; Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle; and Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The pilgrimage was coordinated by the Partnership for a World Without Nuclear Weapons to help encourage many other bishops, religious, dioceses, parishes and organisations to join in work for a more peaceful world without nuclear weapons. In Hiroshima, Cardinal McElroy noted: “Deterrence is not a step on the road to nuclear disarmament, but a morass. That is why the Church could not continue to tolerate an ethic which de facto legitimates possession”.

• Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and more than 24 other Senators for seeking to enforce the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act by pressing for a vote and for voting for a resolution of disapproval to block offensive arms sales to Israel. Sanders and his colleagues cited longstanding U.S. laws and its own policies, which require suspension or limitation of U.S. arms transfers to states, that fail to allow humanitarian assistance to civilians in conflict or that engage in acts that violate international humanitarian law. Two measures were debated and voted on in July. The first, which would block the sale of tens of thousands of assault rifles, failed 70-27. The second, which would block the sale of $675.7 million of bombs and other materiel to Israel, failed 73-24.

• 24 Japanese high school students serving as “peace messengers” advocating for the abolition of nuclear weapons presented about 110,000 signatures for world peace to the United Nations during their visit to the U.N. headquarters in Geneva in September. As the number of surviving hibakusha diminishes over time, the leadership of young activists in recalling the catastrophic humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons and pressing for nuclear disarmament becomes more important.

• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study group that produced the June 2025 report, “Potential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War”. The report found that U.S. government “studies reflecting very large exchanges of tens of thousands of warheads with multi-megaton yields are no longer reflective of current worldwide nuclear stockpiles. In the same vein, scenarios that reflect an informed mix of nuclear weapon employment on both targets within urban areas and military targets outside urban areas, versus only in urban areas, would likely better reflect military strategies and outcomes”. In other words, the study found that the Department of Defense, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Strategic Command, and Department of Homeland Security analyse some (but not all) of the consequences of nuclear detonations.

• The government of Oman for declaring the completion of clearance of antipersonnel mines in June 2025. Oman was contaminated by antipersonnel and anti-vehicle landmines as a result of an internal conflict from 1964–1975. In 2015, Oman reported that all of its hazardous areas had been cleared before it joined the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, but that those areas were in the process of being “re-inspected” based on a workplan to clear all mined areas by a treaty-mandated deadline of February 2025. There are currently no confirmed mined areas in Oman. Oman’s progress was one of the lone bright spots in the global campaign to ban and eliminate landmines.

As the most recent Landmine Monitor Report indicates, cutbacks in U.S. aid for landmine clearance and the withdrawals from the 1997 Landmine Convention by five states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Poland) have set back efforts.

Previous recent winners of the “Arms Control Person of the Year” include:

2024: Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg and the Austrian Foreign Ministry;

2023: U.S. Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky;

2022: Energoatom staff working at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant;  

2021: Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and the Government of Mexico.

Team Maverick.