'France must take responsibility'

Bouzid Boufrioua, a senior milliary official in Algeria, has called on France to take responsibility for the extensive nuclear waste left in the Sahara following nuclear tests in the 1960s.

From END Info 22 | February 2021. Download here

following nuclear tests in the 1960s. He said that: “sixty years after its nuclear tests, France still refuses to reveal the location of its nuclear waste and fully compensate the victims of disease caused by radiation ... On 7 July 2017, 122 member states of the UN General Assembly ratified a new treaty to ban nuclear weapons ... [The treaty] clearly and explicitly recognises the ‘polluter pays’ principle; this is the first time that the international community has called on the nuclear-armed states to rectify the errors of the past.”

Boufrioua is quite right and his words highlight an important aspect of the TPNW: that even though nuclear-armed states have refused to engage with it, let alone sign or ratify it, the treaty itself brings some important points into international law.

Article 7, point 6 of the TPNW states: “Without prejudice to any other duty or obligation that it may have under international law, a State Party that has used or tested nuclear weapons or any other nuclear explosive devices shall have responsibility to provide adequate assistance to affected State Parties, for the purpose of victim assistance and environmental remediation.”

A big question will be how can the ‘polluter pays’ principle embodied in the TPNW be put into effect? The precise answer to this is a matter for international lawyers, but a non-expert reading of this clause would suggest that it only pertains to those states which have signed the TPNW. However, this should not be a discouragement to the peace movement. Is it possible to construct a set of precise and targeted demands based on this clause? Can those state parties to the TPNW like Austria and Ireland, who - like France - are also members of the European Union find a means to raise these issues in the European Parliament and European Commission? They should certainly be encouraged to.

France is not the only nuclear power which must be made to take responsibility. The British Nuclear Test Veterans Association continues to campaign for restitution for the British nuclear test veterans who took part in the British and American nuclear tests at the Montebello Islands, Christmas Island, Malden Island and Maralinga & Emu Field, South Australia. Local communities, who were often simply ignored by the nuclear testing countries, their environment and lives were also victim to tests.

For example, Operation Grapple was a set of four British nuclear weapons test series of early atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati (Christmas Island) in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean (modern Kiribati) as part of the British hydrogen bomb programme. Nine nuclear explosions were initiated, culminating in the United Kingdom becoming the third recognised possessor of thermonuclear weapons and the restoration of the nuclear Special Relationship with the United States with the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement.

For a place at the ‘nuclear table’, Britain - like France - staged explosive nuclear tests without sufficient regard for the longer-term impact. The nuclear powers must all take responsibility.