OSLO, Norway  — The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a forceful show of support for a grassroots effort that seeks to pressure the world’s nuclear powers to give up the weapons that could destroy the planet.

The choice of the little-known coalition of disarmament activists put the Nobel committee again at the forefront of geopolitics at a time when fears are rising over North Korea’s nuclear and missile program and the invective it has drawn from U.S. President Donald Trump.

The committee cited the tiny, Geneva-based ICAN for its work that led to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was reached in July at the United Nations.

The group “has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world’s nations to pledge to cooperate … in efforts to stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons,” Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said in the announcement.

More than 120 countries approved the treaty over opposition from nuclear-armed countries and their allies. In a statement issued after the Nobel was announced, the U.S. reiterated its position that the treaty “will not result in the elimination of a single nuclear weapon.”