In April 2014, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) submitted a lawsuit to the International Court of Justice to hold nuclear-armed states, including the United Kingdom, accountable for violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
This week hearings will begin in the Hague to clarify the merits of the RMI lawsuit by allowing the United Kingdom (UK), India and Pakistan to respond.
The story of the Marshall Islands, its experience of the horric effects of nuclear weapons, and its inspiring work to build a nuclear-free world, is a poignant reminder of why we must do all we can to scrap government plans to replace Trident, the UK’s nuclear weapons system.
As the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation states “The RMI, a tiny island nation in the Pacific, was used for 12 years, from 1946 to 1958, as a testing ground for nuclear bombs by the United States. Sixty-seven nuclear weapons were tested and the health and environmental effects of those tests still plague the Marshall Islanders to this day. The destructive power of the 1954 “Castle Bravo” nuclear test was 1,000 times greater than the bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima, Japan.”
CND’s Kate Hudson said in a blog post earlier this week “There can be no doubt the Marshall Islands deserve our support for their courageous stand and we need to help make this case more widely known.”