The second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is underway in New York. Absent (again) is the British government. Ben Donaldson of Spoiler Alert reports on how the UK is refusing to face up to the toxic legacy of nuclear testing in its former colony, Kiribati.
Just before Christmas 1961, over gin and tonics at the governor’s residence in Bermuda, UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan lent part of another British colony, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, to US President John F. Kennedy for nuclear testing. As their advisers casually debated how many nuclear weapons would be needed to destroy particular nations, glasses clinking, J.F.K. convinced Macmillan that any attempt to negotiate arms control with the Soviet Union would only give the Soviets time to develop deadlier nuclear weapons. The only answer, argued the U.S. president, was more weapons; more testing. The UK had already detonated nine nuclear bombs over the Pacific colony’s Malden and Christmas (now called Kiritimati) islands during 1957-1958.
Arms control talks were scuttled and the US conducted 24 further blasts on Christmas Island in 1962 with the UK’s blessing, as well as a collaborative regime of UK-US testing in Nevada all the way through to 1991. Altogether, around 30 megatonnes of explosive power – approximately 750 times the power of the combined bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – was unleashed over Kiritimati between 1957 and 1962.
Travail of New York
Fast forward 62 years and diplomats, civil society, academics, scientists, and survivors of nuclear testing from across the world have gathered at the United Nations in New York. Their goal: to eliminate nuclear weapons. The five-day event is a meet-up of the 93 states that have so far signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and a few that haven’t.
Agreed by the UN General Assembly in 2017 and entering into force in January 2021, the TPNW includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities. These include undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, host, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. The Treaty also obliges states parties to provide adequate assistance to individuals affected by the use or testing of nuclear weapons, as well as to undertake environmental remediation in areas contaminated as a result of the testing or use of nuclear weapons.
As the TPNW grows more influential, states that have caused harm through testing find themselves in a particular bind. By continuing to dismiss the treaty, states like the UK are actively impeding the humanitarian work of TPNW states – work aimed at rehabilitating the environment and providing for the needs of their populations.
The nuclear tests had devastating consequences for the health of the local population in Kiribati (as most of the former British colony was renamed at independence in 1979) and for the environment. Exposure to radiation also affected service personnel, including those from Fiji – another British colony at that time, and now a state party to the TPNW.
Adding insult to injury
Over six decades after the conclusion of UK and US nuclear testing in Kiribati, London remains extremely secretive about what it allowed to happen there, and refuses to engage with Kiribati in its efforts to obtain remediation for the devastating environmental and societal damage that the blasts inflicted. The UK holds reams of documents detailing what occurred during those tests, a large portion of which remains classified and inaccessible.
Responding to a parliamentary question by British MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Foreign Office minister Leo Docherty said:
“The UK Government has no plans to respond to the joint statement made by Kiribati and Kazakhstan, as their statement is inconsistent with the UK’s position on the legacy of nuclear tests. However, we recognise efforts to address the impact of historic nuclear testing and pay tribute to the veterans and civilians from the Pacific region involved in the tests. The UK has reviewed residual contamination relating to British nuclear tests on Kiribati and concluded that any required remediation had been undertaken.”
Leo Docherty MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the FCDO, 27 Nov 2023.
Unpacking the statement, the UK appears unwilling to respond to the request for assistance because, by doing so, they would need to consider the slew of evidence of ongoing harm stemming from the UK’s nuclear tests in Kiribati, which, according to Docherty, “is inconsistent with the UK’s position on the legacy of nuclear tests”.
Enyseh Teimory, Head of Policy at United Nations Association – UK, has called the UK position “indefensible”. She said, “As a British citizen and human rights campaigner, I’m outraged that the UK government refuses to adequately recognize the lasting impacts and suffering caused by nuclear testing on Kiribati.” She has called on the UK to “stop neglecting its responsibilities and engage with victims assistance work to address these harms.”
The UK claims that the Island’s clean-up was completed in the early 2000s, a claim that is disputed by the Kiribati government and testing survivors.
Kiribati islander Taraem Taukaro told us, “Even now on the Island we still can’t eat some of the fish as they were poisoned.”
The physical and mental health effects and social, economic, and cultural impacts of nuclear testing in Kiribati are well-evidenced and persist to this day. Health problems consistent with exposure to radiation that indigenous populations – as well as military veterans from the UK, New Zealand and Fiji – associated with the UK’s tests remain under-assessed by successive UK governments.
The request for assistance was made in a joint statement read by Kiribati’s Ambassador Teburoro Tito from the floor of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Conference in Vienna in August 2023:
“We request the Nuclear-Weapon States to provide adequate financial compensation and engage in information exchanges with States Parties whose territories served as test sites.”
Elizabeth Minor of Article 36, a UK organisation focused on reducing harm from weapons, called the government’s response “deeply inadequate.” Minor continued, “If the government is serious about efforts to address the legacies of nuclear testing, it should engage properly with Kiribati’s work, including the new assessments on ongoing harm Kiribati is undertaking under the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”
The UK has never apologised for the harm caused by the tests in Kiribati or offered compensation. The country has also refused to attend meetings of the TPNW and listen, learn, and bear witness to the testimony of survivors of the UK’s nuclear testing.
The TPNW conference will be among the issues discussed at Rethinking Security’s 06 December webinar on Global Human Security: Cooperation, Common Security and the Climate, featuring Elizabeth Minor of Article 36,among other speakers. Register here.
Ben Donaldson is a freelance writer and advisor working on arms control and UN reform. He is reporting from the nuclear ban treaty for Spoiler Alert – a new online magazine launched by Lex International. He is also known for Blue Smoke – an initiative to scrutinise the politicking around top UN appointments.
This article is based on copy first published on Spoiler Alert.
The views and opinions expressed in posts on the Rethinking Security blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the network and its broader membership.
Image Credits: Banner image: Unknown. Military personnel watch the UK’s first thermonuclear weapons test, Christmas Island, 08 Nov 1957. Image 1: Robert Knudsen, White House Photographs. President Kennedy meets with Prime Minister Macmillan inside Government House in Hamilton, Bermuda, December 1961. ( c/o John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston). Image 2: Mrs Loata Masi. Fijian troops on Christmas Island during Operation Grapple, via Radio New Zealand.
