The Marshall Islands, the Pacific chain where the U.S. carried out dozens of nuclear tests in the late 1940s and 1950s, has filed suit in the Hague against Washington and the governments of eight other countries it says have not lived up to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The Guardian says in the "unprecedented legal action" brought before the International Court of Justice on Thursday "the Republic of the Marshall Islands accuses the nuclear weapons states of a 'flagrant denial of human justice.' It argues it is justified in taking the action because of the harm it suffered as a result of the nuclear arms race."
Besides the U.S., the Marshall Islands is also suing Russia, China, France and the U.K., which have all signed the non-proliferation treaty, or NPT, as well as four other countries who have never signed — India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, which has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons.
In court documents, the Marshall Islands argues that the 1958 NPT, which did not come into force until 1970, amounts to a compact between nuclear haves and have-nots. Non-weapons states essentially agreed not to try to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for weapons states moving toward disarmament, the Marshalls claims.
According to the Guardian:
"Although the size of the arsenals are sharply down from the height of the cold war, the Marshall Islands' legal case notes there remain more than 17,000 warheads in existence, 16,000 of them owned by Russia and the US – enough to destroy all life on the planet."