Alicia Sanders-Zakre, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
On March 1, 1954, the United States detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands a thermonuclear weapon 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Seventy years later, this largest ever US nuclear explosion, alongside the 66 other bombs the US tested across the Marshall Islands, has had enduring consequences. International support for a new UN effort to provide assistance to nuclear survivors and to clean up radioactive contamination is urgent and necessary to begin to address this injustice.
Benetick Kabua Maddison of the Marshallese Educational Initiative delivers a statement on behalf of affected communities at a recent Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Credit: ICAN, 2023.
The 15-megaton nuclear weapon test, code named “Castle Bravo,” obliterated two atolls and part of a third, and caused radioactive fallout, sometimes in near-lethal doses, in nearby atolls and across the Marshall Islands. A scientific assessment placed the risk of developing cancer for those exposed on the nearby Rongelap Atoll at one in five. The crew of a Japanese fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, 86 miles from the Castle Bravo test, also suffered, with one man dying within months, and all being hospitalized immediately following the explosion. Later in the decade, the US studied the effects of radiation on humans by inviting the Marshallese to return to areas they knew to be dangerously contaminated by its tests.
This “limited nuclear war,” as one scholar refers to the era of nuclear testing, has had lasting environmental, socioeconomic, psychological, and human rights consequences, even beyond the devastating physical impacts of exposure to ionizing radiation. In 2022, the UN Human Rights Council mandated a new study on the human rights impacts of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, which will be presented this September.
One of the lasting human rights impacts is displacement. Inhabitants from contaminated and destroyed atolls have been permanently displaced and have lost their traditional sources of food and work. The highest concentration of Marshallese people outside of the Marshall Islands currently reside in Arkansas, where the Marshallese Educational Initiative (MEI), which raises awareness about Marshallese history and culture, is based. In the week leading up to the 70th anniversary of the Castle Bravo test, known as Nuclear Remembrance Day in the Marshall Islands, MEI convened a Nuclear Legacy Week conference.
The environmental damage of the era of nuclear testing, which raises concerns under the right to a healthy environment, is compounded by climate change. Runit Dome, a radioactive waste dump left by the US on Enewetak Atoll, is now leaking into the ocean and vulnerable to collapse with rising sea levels caused by climate change.
Despite these devastating impacts, assistance to nuclear survivors has been woefully insufficient. In the 1980s, the US agreed to a one-time settlement of $150 million to compensate survivors, but the fund quickly ran out. Through the Marshall Islands’ Compact of Free Association with the US, Washington provides the country with economic assistance in exchange for military rights, but recent negotiations on a renewed Compact failed to secure any more economic assistance explicitly linked to nuclear testing.
A new international initiative to provide support for survivors of nuclear weapons use and testing and to remediate contaminated environments could help. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), adopted in July 2017 at the UN, which now has 93 signatory states and 70 states parties, contains obligations for countries to assist victims of nuclear weapons use and testing and to work towards cleaning up their environmental legacy. It also establishes a framework of shared responsibility in which all states work together to achieve these goals. Discussions on a proposed international trust fund and other related measures are led by two countries where nuclear weapons were tested—Kazakhstan and Kiribati.
The Marshall Islands and the US have not yet joined the TPNW and both should do so without delay. The Marshall Islands stands to gain from the international cooperation and assistance provisions included in the treaty to help nuclear-test affected nations, and designed by affected nations themselves. The US, as the only country to use nuclear weapons in wartime and which carried out about half of all nuclear weapons tests worldwide, has a moral responsibility to address its past wrongs in an international forum guided by human rights principles.
In addition to addressing past harms, the TPNW provides a verifiable pathway to the elimination of nuclear weapons. Seventy years after the Castle Bravo test, it should be an urgent priority for all governments to join.
Alicia Sanders-Zakre, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
On March 1, 1954, the United States detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands a thermonuclear weapon 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Seventy years later, this largest ever US nuclear explosion, alongside the 66 other bombs the US tested across the Marshall Islands, has had enduring consequences. International support for a new UN effort to provide assistance to nuclear survivors and to clean up radioactive contamination is urgent and necessary to begin to address this injustice.
The 15-megaton nuclear weapon test, code named “Castle Bravo,” obliterated two atolls and part of a third, and caused radioactive fallout, sometimes in near-lethal doses, in nearby atolls and across the Marshall Islands. A scientific assessment placed the risk of developing cancer for those exposed on the nearby Rongelap Atoll at one in five. The crew of a Japanese fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, 86 miles from the Castle Bravo test, also suffered, with one man dying within months, and all being hospitalized immediately following the explosion. Later in the decade, the US studied the effects of radiation on humans by inviting the Marshallese to return to areas they knew to be dangerously contaminated by its tests.
This “limited nuclear war,” as one scholar refers to the era of nuclear testing, has had lasting environmental, socioeconomic, psychological, and human rights consequences, even beyond the devastating physical impacts of exposure to ionizing radiation. In 2022, the UN Human Rights Council mandated a new study on the human rights impacts of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, which will be presented this September.
One of the lasting human rights impacts is displacement. Inhabitants from contaminated and destroyed atolls have been permanently displaced and have lost their traditional sources of food and work. The highest concentration of Marshallese people outside of the Marshall Islands currently reside in Arkansas, where the Marshallese Educational Initiative (MEI), which raises awareness about Marshallese history and culture, is based. In the week leading up to the 70th anniversary of the Castle Bravo test, known as Nuclear Remembrance Day in the Marshall Islands, MEI convened a Nuclear Legacy Week conference.
The environmental damage of the era of nuclear testing, which raises concerns under the right to a healthy environment, is compounded by climate change. Runit Dome, a radioactive waste dump left by the US on Enewetak Atoll, is now leaking into the ocean and vulnerable to collapse with rising sea levels caused by climate change.
Despite these devastating impacts, assistance to nuclear survivors has been woefully insufficient. In the 1980s, the US agreed to a one-time settlement of $150 million to compensate survivors, but the fund quickly ran out. Through the Marshall Islands’ Compact of Free Association with the US, Washington provides the country with economic assistance in exchange for military rights, but recent negotiations on a renewed Compact failed to secure any more economic assistance explicitly linked to nuclear testing.
A new international initiative to provide support for survivors of nuclear weapons use and testing and to remediate contaminated environments could help. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), adopted in July 2017 at the UN, which now has 93 signatory states and 70 states parties, contains obligations for countries to assist victims of nuclear weapons use and testing and to work towards cleaning up their environmental legacy. It also establishes a framework of shared responsibility in which all states work together to achieve these goals. Discussions on a proposed international trust fund and other related measures are led by two countries where nuclear weapons were tested—Kazakhstan and Kiribati.
The Marshall Islands and the US have not yet joined the TPNW and both should do so without delay. The Marshall Islands stands to gain from the international cooperation and assistance provisions included in the treaty to help nuclear-test affected nations, and designed by affected nations themselves. The US, as the only country to use nuclear weapons in wartime and which carried out about half of all nuclear weapons tests worldwide, has a moral responsibility to address its past wrongs in an international forum guided by human rights principles.
In addition to addressing past harms, the TPNW provides a verifiable pathway to the elimination of nuclear weapons. Seventy years after the Castle Bravo test, it should be an urgent priority for all governments to join.
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