By Sarah E. Treptow
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania
MAJURO, Marshall Islands – The Nuclear Claims Tribunal based in Majuro announced last week that it will not provide any compensation payments for a third year in a row. The announcement comes despite the fact that it owes more than $2 billion in already approved awards to Marshall Islanders for personal injuries, land damage, and nuclear clean-ups.
The Tribunal was established in the 1980’s by a Compact of Free Association between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands with a mandate to adjudicate and compensate personal injury and other claims coming out of the 67 nuclear tests the U.S. performed at Bikini and Enewetak atolls. After a multi-year process of hearings, land appraisals and expert testimony, the Tribunal awarded Enewtak, Bikini and Rongelap more than $2 billion in land damage and clean-up funding. Only $3.9 million of the land damage claims have been paid for lack of funds.
The fund that was once at $150 million is now down to a quarter of a million dollars which Tribunal Chairman Gregory Danz reports is barely enough to keep the Tribunal operational for a few more months. Danz added that maintaining operations into the future is crucial to meet the needs of people who develop cancers from exposure to U.S. nuclear tests in the coming years. The U.S. National Cancer Institute study from 2004 estimated that 531 cancers would result among Marshall Islanders exposed to fallout from the nuclear testing program and it said that over half of these cancers were not yet developed in the population.
President Tomeing has started to pressure U.S. government officials, seeking endorsement of a plan to use U.S. grant funding to provide $1.2 million annually for Marshall Islanders with approved but not paid personal injury awards. He called this proposal an interim measure until a satisfactory compensation program can be put into place.
Almost half of the 2,000 islanders who have been awarded nuclear test compensation from the Tribunal have died before receiving their full award.
Mr. Danz calls the U.S. provided compensation funding “manifestly inadequate.” The inability to provide 100 percent of its compensation awards “provides the best indication of (the) inadequacy (of nuclear test compensation from the U.S.) and the closure of the Tribunal would cripple the efforts of the Marshall Islands to obtain additional funding under (the Compact’s nuclear compensation) provision.”
For more information, please see:
Radio New Zealand International – For third year no compensation for Marshall Islands nuclear test victims – 08 December 2008
Pacific Magazine – No Compensation for N-Test Victims in 2008 – 07 December 2008
BBC News – Timeline: Marshall Islands
