The tiny Marshall Islands is to seek in March to persuade the UN’s highest court to take up a lawsuit against India, Pakistan and Britain, which it accuses of failing to halt the nuclear arms race.
The International Court of Justice — founded in 1945 to rule on legal disputes between nations — announced late on Friday the dates for separate hearings for the three cases between March 7 and March 16.
In the cases brought against India and Pakistan, the court is to examine whether the tribunal based in The Hague is competent to hear the lawsuits.
The hearing involving Britain is to be devoted to “preliminary objections” raised by London.
A decision is to be made at a later date as to whether the cases can proceed.
In 2014, the Marshall Islands — a Pacific Ocean territory with 55,000 people — accused nine countries of “not fulfilling their obligations with respect to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”
The nations are China, Britain, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the US. The government based in the Marshall Islands capital of Majuro said by not stopping the nuclear arms race, the countries continued to breach their obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — even if the treaty has not been by signed by countries such as India and Pakistan.
The Marshall Islands had decided to sue the world’s nuclear heavyweights as “it has a particular awareness of the dire consequences of nuclear weapons,” it said. Between 1946 and 1958 the US conducted repeated nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, Majuro’s representatives said in papers filed with the court, but the court only admitted the three cases brought against Britain, India and Pakistan because they recognize the court’s authority.
In March 2014, the Marshall Islands marked 60 years since a devastating hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, which vaporized an island and exposed thousands in the surrounding area to radioactive fallout.
Bikini Islanders have lived in exile since they were moved for the first weapons tests in 1946. When US government scientists declared Bikini safe for resettlement, some residents were allowed to return in the early 1970s, but they were removed again in 1978 after ingesting high levels of radiation from eating food grown on the former test site.
The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal had awarded more than US$2 billion in claims arising form the tests, but stopped paying after a US$150 million US compensation fund ran out.
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