Marshall Islands sues nuclear powers for failure on disarmament

The tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands is taking on the United States and the world’s eight other nuclear-armed nations with an unprecedented lawsuit demanding that they meet their obligations toward disarmament, and accusing them of “flagrant violations” of international law.

The island group, which was used for dozens of U.S. nuclear tests after World War II, filed suit Thursday against each of the nine countries, filing the action in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The country is also filing a federal lawsuit against the U.S. in San Francisco, naming President Barack Obama, the departments and secretaries of defense and energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The Marshall Islands claims the nine countries are modernizing their nuclear arsenals instead of negotiating disarmament, and it estimates that they will spend $1 trillion on those arsenals over the next decade.

“I personally see it as kind of David and Goliath, except that there are no slingshots involved,” said David Krieger, president of the California-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Krieger is acting as a consultant in the case. There are hopes that other countries will join the legal effort, he said.

The other countries targeted are Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. The last four are not parties to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), but the lawsuits argue that they are bound by its provisions under “customary international law.” The NPT, considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament efforts, requires negotiations among countries in good faith on disarmament.

None of the countries had been informed in advance of the lawsuits.

Representatives of the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands said they could not immediately comment.

Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said he was unaware of the lawsuit. However, he said that "it doesn’t sound relevant because we are not members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."

The Marshall Islands was the site of 67 nuclear tests by the U.S. over a 12-year period, with lasting health and environmental effects.

“Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons, and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities,” the country’s foreign minister, Tony de Brum, said in a news release announcing the lawsuits.

The country is seeking action, not compensation. It wants the courts to require that the nine nuclear-armed states meet their obligations.

“There hasn’t been a case where individual governments are saying to the nuclear states, ‘You are not complying with your disarmament obligations,’” said John Burroughs, executive director of the New York–based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, and part of the international pro bono legal team. “This is a contentious case that could result in a binding judgment.”

Several Nobel Peace Prize winners are said to support the legal action, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Iranian-born rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi.

“We must ask why these leaders continue to break their promises and put their citizens and the world at risk of horrific devastation,” Tutu said in the statement announcing the legal action.

The Marshall Islands is asking the countries to accept the ICJ's jurisdiction in this case and explain their positions on the issue.

The court has seen cases on nuclear weapons before. In the 1970s, Australia and New Zealand took France to the court in an effort to stop its atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific.

The idea to challenge the nine nuclear-armed powers came out of a lunch meeting in late 2012 after the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation gave the Marshall Islands’ foreign minister a leadership award, Krieger said.

“I’ve known Tony a long time,” he said of the Marshall Islands’ foreign minister. “We both have had a strong interest for a long time in seeing action by the nuclear weapons states.”

Frustration with the nuclear-armed states has grown in recent years as action toward disarmament appeared to stall, Burroughs and Krieger said.

“One thing I would point to is the U.S. withdrawal in 2002 from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; that cast a shadow over the future disarmament movement,” Krieger said. The treaty had originally bound the U.S. and the Soviet Union. “One other thing: In 1995, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty had a review and was extended indefinitely. I think the nuclear states party to the treaty felt that once that happened, there was no longer pressure on them to fulfill their obligations.”

In 1996, the ICJ said unanimously that an obligation existed to bring the disarmament negotiations to a conclusion, Burroughs said.

Instead, "progress toward disarmament has essentially been stalemated since then," he said.

Some of the nuclear-armed countries might argue in response to these new lawsuits that they have been making progress in certain areas or that they support the start of negotiations toward disarmament, but the Marshall Islands government is likely to say, “Good, but not enough” or “Your actions belie your words,” Burroughs said.

The Marshall Islands foreign minister has approached other countries about filing suit as well, Krieger said. “I think there has been some interest, but I’m not sure anybody is ready.”

The Associated Press