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The states that have caused harm to peoples around the planet can finally stop pretending that such harms are either nonexistent or that they have done enough to address them.
On November 7, the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly supported a resolution to help victims of nuclear weapons use and testing. Brought forward by the Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati, and co-sponsored by 39 additional U.N. Member States, the resolution received 169 votes in favor, with only four nuclear weapon possessors—Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—voting against it. The remaining five nuclear armed states (China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States), plus Poland, all abstained.
The vote is a resounding affirmation that nuclear justice efforts are here to stay. The states that have caused harm to peoples around the planet, including their own citizens and those whose care they were entrusted with, can finally stop pretending that such harms are either nonexistent or that they have done enough to address them. The nuclear weapon possessors, most especially the five nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, United States, and the United Kingdom—recognized as such by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, must engage in earnest.
Ultimately, nuclear justice must also include elimination of all nuclear weapon arsenals. This would ensure that the suffering of those impacted by nuclear weapons has not been in vain.
Ever-growing understanding of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapon attacks by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the testing of nuclear weapons that lasted for decades and reached numerous corners of the globe, provided a huge impetus behind the Humanitarian Initiative, a successful effort started in the early 2010s by a group of states in collaboration with civil society, all motivated to change the nuclear weapons status quo. Coupled with the growing appreciation of what nuclear war would bring today or tomorrow (subject of another U.N. resolution that passed this month with 141 in favor votes, 30 abstentions, and France, Russia, and the United Kingdom voting no), as well as the research on the risk of nuclear weapon use and the recognition that no adequate response could be devised for such a possibility, the Humanitarian Initiative led to successful efforts to bring into the U.N. system a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons or TPNW).
When the TPNW was drafted in 2017, the diplomats recognized that it wasn’t enough to prohibit nuclear weapon activities, but that the past and present consequences for people and the environment had to be addressed head-on. This led to the Articles 6 and 7 of the TPNW on victim assistance, environmental remediation, and international cooperation, which are collectively referred to as the humanitarian provisions of the treaty. The goal is not just to make these ongoing harms integral to the effort to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons, but to address them directly and provide tangible results for the communities that have suffered from adverse health and socioeconomic impacts for decades and whose environments may still be radiologically contaminated. Having entered into force in 2021, the TPNW is now faced with the implementation of these provisions for two states that are already parties to the treaty, Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati. Kazakhstan was the site of 456 Soviet nuclear tests from 1949 to 1991, while Kiribati was home from 1957 to 1962 to United States and United Kingdom tests whose cumulative yield was equivalent to more than 2,000 Hiroshima bombs.
The humanitarian provisions of the TPNW have led to the broadening of conversations about these harms and the new norm arising from the treaty of the obligation to address them. While the United States had a Radiation Exposure Compensation Act from the early 1990s until its expiration earlier this year, and France introduced its Loi Morin law in 2010, these efforts have been severely limited in their scope and impact. In both cases, the definition of a victim was restricted in such a way as to prevent many of those harmed from qualifying for the compensation. Even for the people who have qualified, the assistance has been inadequate. Worse yet is the case of all of the communities that have been completely disregarded and excluded from such compensation schemes.
What is particularly powerful about the nuclear justice resolution is that, with the exception of Poland this year, it has left the nuclear weapon possessors totally alone. Even their closest friends and allies have now voted in favor of the resolution for the second year in a row. More than 70 states that have not yet joined the TPNW have now affirmed that nuclear justice is a worthwhile effort they are ready to stand behind. In this way, the resolution is a powerful example of the way in which the TPNW Is already having an impact on international norms and policies even as nearly half of U.N. Members States have yet to join the treaty.
The road to nuclear justice is long. It will include acknowledgment, compensation, and the promise to never cause such harms again. The next phase must consist of genuine and independent assessment of needs both for victim assistance and environmental remediation in all impacted areas, with the international community coming together to offer help, including technical and financial assistance. How much remains to be done will in many ways depend on what the assessments demonstrate.
Ultimately, nuclear justice must also include elimination of all nuclear weapon arsenals. This would ensure that the suffering of those impacted by nuclear weapons has not been in vain. Instead, future generations will see it as the rallying call that brought the international community together to guarantee the right of survival to humanity and our fellow Earth inhabitants for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. is projected to spend over $750 billion on nuclear weapons over the next decade—a fact it feels impossible to reconcile with the abandonment of the people affected by that spending.
It’s been nearly 80 years since the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico. Communities have been reeling ever since.
For generations, Americans who live “downwind” of nuclear testing and development sites have suffered deadly health complications. And this summer, funding for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) expired, putting their hard-earned compensation at risk.
Coming alongside sky-high spending on nuclear weapons development, this lapse is an outrage. Funding for these communities, which span much of the country, should be not only restored but expanded.
To protect future generations—and our own—the ultimate goal should be an end to all nuclear weapons development.
Alongside New Mexicans, people in Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Utah, and beyond have suffered health complications from nuclear testing in Nevada. And fallout from decades of tests ravaged the Marshall Islands, which were occupied by the U.S. after World War II.
Communities in Colorado were exposed to radiation from the Rocky Flats weapons plant. And people living near Missouri’s Coldwater Creek were exposed when World War II-era nuclear waste was buried there.
Over the generations since, tens of thousands of people have been affected. Health impacts include respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, birth defects, and elevated rates of cancer.
We’re from New Mexico, the only “cradle-to-grave” state in which all steps of the nuclear production process—mining, testing, and disposal—occur together. We’ve lived near impacted communities our entire lives.
Tina Cordova, co-founder of New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, says five generations of her family have suffered health and economic impacts from nuclear testing. “We are forced to bury our loved ones on a regular basis,” she said.
Uranium mining in the Navajo Nation has also taken a terrible toll. Between 1944 and 1986, 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo land. Indigenous miners were exposed to radiation without proper safety protocols, resulting in aggressive cancers, miscarriages, lung diseases, and other illnesses.
After decades of struggle to get compensation, communities impacted by nuclear weapons development finally won passage of RECA in 1990—45 years after the first atomic bomb was dropped.
The initial law provided $2.6 billion to around 41,000 individuals, limiting coverage to onsite participants and downwinders within designated areas of the Nevada Test Site. The bill was amended in 2000 to include those who contracted cancer or other specific diseases from working as uranium miners between 1942 and 1971.
Since then, there have been bipartisan efforts to expand the bill’s narrow scope to other impacted communities. In response to years of advocacy, an extended and expanded version of RECA successfully passed the Senate this spring with 69-30 in favor—and President Joe Biden’s backing.
The bill would have expanded RECA eligibility to all downwinders in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, and Guam, along with previously excluded areas of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. And it would have included miners exposed to radiation until 1990.
But Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson blocked a vote in the House, abandoning the unseen victims of the U.S. nuclear arms race. Now RECA has expired altogether.
It’s not for lack of money. The U.S. is projected to spend over $750 billion on nuclear weapons over the next decade—a fact it feels impossible to reconcile with the abandonment of the people affected by that spending.
Meanwhile, people are still being exposed to radiation.
Even now, 523 abandoned uranium mines containing waste piles remain on Navajo territory—and companies continue to haul uranium through Navajo land, despite a nearly two-decade old ban on uranium mining there.
Mismanagement of nuclear waste is another ongoing concern. In 2019, 250 barrels of waste were lost en route to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
To protect future generations—and our own—the ultimate goal should be an end to all nuclear weapons development. But as we work toward that goal, repairing the harm to impacted communities—by renewing and expanding RECA—is a necessary next step.
Between 1946 and 1958 the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands that vaporized whole islands, carved craters into the shallow lagoons, and exiled hundreds of people from their homes.
March 1 marks 70 years since the U.S. used its biggest ever nuclear weapon—on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The bomb was 15 megatons, 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
On this day we remember the victims of the Castle Bravo nuclear blast and all other victims of the nuclear era, which has brought untold pain, death, and damage, affecting both people and planet in profound ways.
There’s no better way to remember Castle Bravo day than by taking action on behalf of the victims of radiation and pushing for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Between 1946 and 1958 the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. The blasts vaporized whole islands, carved craters into the shallow lagoons, and exiled hundreds of people from their homes. The Castle Bravo blast was the largest of all, sending particulate and gaseous fallout around the entire planet.
Concerned U.S. citizens tried to stop the tests by contacting Congress, the president, and the press and by demonstrating on campuses and in the streets. They weren’t successful through these conventional means, so in 1958 four Quakers bought a small sailboat, the Golden Rule, and attempted to sail her right into the testing zone in the Marshall Islands.
The crew of the Golden Rule was arrested in Honolulu and could not continue. A second boat, the Phoenix of Hiroshima, took the baton and completed the sail into the Marshall Islands, resulting in the arrest of the Phoenix’s captain. The actions and arrests of these crews spurred a massive public outcry that finally led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
The Golden Rule also inspired the founding of Greenpeace in 1971, whose first mission was to sail to Amchitka Island, Alaska, to stop nuclear weapons testing. The U.S. Navy stopped Greenpeace, too. The nuclear bomb the group had come to stop was detonated, but the subsequent tests were canceled and the U.S. stopped the entire Amchitka nuclear test program.Greenpeace and her vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, played an important role in the Marshall Islands in 1985 when Rongelap residents asked Greenpeace to help them relocate to a new home. Both Bikini and Enewetak’s people were evacuated from their island homes prior to the nuclear tests, hoping to avoid radioactive fallout. But the inhabitants of Rongelap (150 kilometers away) were not so fortunate. Within four hours of the Castle Bravo explosion, fallout was settling on the island. A fine white ash landed on the heads and bare arms of people standing in the open. It dissolved into water supplies and drifted into houses.
With double the usual miscarriages and other health problems caused by the Castle Bravo test, the people of Rongelap begged the U.S. government to evacuate them. But they were now human “guinea pigs,” and U.S. scientists wanted to study the effects of radiation on the population.
Finally, in 1985, Greenpeace made three 180 kilometer trips from Rongelap to Mejato (in the Kwajalein Atoll), taking 300 islanders to safety.
The Golden Rule disappeared from public view in 1958 and eventually sank in Humboldt Bay in far northern California in 2010. After a five-year rebuild, she was re-launched and returned to her anti-nuclear mission by Veterans For Peace.
In 2016 when the Golden Rule visited Portland, Oregon, we visited with a Marshallese group who built a traditional sailing canoe. Most people in and from the Marshall Islands have never heard of the Golden Rule or the Phoenix of Hiroshima. However, when they hear the story, they are very excited that people attempted to help them all those years ago.
Kiana Juda-Angelo presented the Golden Rule Project with a Marshallese flag at our public presentation in Portland, Oregon in 2016.
Hawaii has one of the largest populations of Marshall Islanders in the U.S. It has been our pleasure to meet them and commemorate Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day in Honolulu in 2019.
In 2022, as the Golden Rule sailed down the Mississippi River along the “Great Loop,” we passed through Dubuque, Iowa, where there is a community of 800 or so Marshall Islanders. Veterans For Peace member Art Roche told them the story of the Golden Rule’s 1958 voyage and that we were bringing the boat to Dubuque! They greeted us with leis and songs of sweet harmony in their traditional clothing. We enjoyed dancing, speeches, and song for a whole weekend.
When the Golden Rule was in New York City we met the Permanent United Nations Representative from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Ambassador Amatlain Elizabeth Kabua. She explained that there were several issues that could be improved:
For the last three decades, Marshall Islanders have sought compensation from the U.S. for the health and environmental effects of nuclear testing. They’ve been denied standing to sue in U.S. courts, and Congress has declined their requests. The Compact of Free Association (COFA) which governs the relationship between the U.S., Palau, Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands was renegotiated in 2023. However, Congress has yet to fund the $7 billion dollars that was approved.
The Marshall Islands are also being hit hard by global warming and slowly sinking into the rising seas. This will submerge a highly radioactive nuclear waste dump, Runit dome. Runit dome contains nuclear contamination from both the Marshall Islands and the Nevada test site.
On March 1, let’s remember all of the victims of radiation—from Hiroshima and Nagasaki; nuclear testing areas; and uranium mining, milling, processing, and disposal sites.
Let your senators and representative know that you support fully funding the Compact of Free Association (COFA).
Tell them that you support the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, including its expansion to include those people exposed from the Trinity test in New Mexico in 1945.
Work for the U.S. to sign the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which includes compensation for victims of radiation. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, is working hard to get all nations to sign the treaty.
Back from the Brink urges the U.S. government to:
Their website has an advocacy toolkit and sample scripts for talking with the press and policy makers.
Two important bills are in Congress: H. Res 77 would implement the Back from the Brink Measures. HR 2775 would move money from nuclear weapons manufacturing to funding fossil-free, nuclear-free energy as well as human needs. Ask your representative to sponsor these bills and your senators to introduce a companion bill!
There’s no better way to remember Castle Bravo day than by taking action on behalf of the victims of radiation and pushing for the abolition of nuclear weapons.