Human rights and the casualties of nuclear testing

Barrillot, Bruno

doi:10.1080/14623520701528965

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In the Pacific territories it controlled, including French Polynesia, the French government collected data on radiation levels haphazardly, using not its civilian National Radiation Laboratory (as in metropolitan France), but military institutions involved with the test program (Ahmed et al, 2021; Danielsson & Danielsson, 1986; Drozdovitch et al, 2021; French MFA, 1973). The data has been closely guarded and revealed only fragmentarily following investigative reporting or political pressure (Barrillot, 2007; Henley, 1998). Following reports of fallout across the Pacific and Latin America, the French Minister of Defense begrudging allowed that, ‘It cannot be denied that these atmospheric nuclear tests increase the radioactive pollution of the air in Polynesia’ (Danielsson & Danielsson, 1986, p. 145).…”

Section: Fallout May Disperse Beyond Preconceived Temporal‐spatial Bo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A medicalized focus on cancers alone underappreciates other effects of nuclear weapons tests on human rights. Barrillot (2007, p. 452) argued that ‘Nuclear “modernity” was a brutal irruption’ into Pacific societies. Therefore, the ‘effects of the nuclear tests on the Polynesian population should not only be measured in terms of “radiation induced” diseases’.…”

Section: The Consequences Of Nuclear Weapons Testing Are Not Captured...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Local leaders argue such assertions demonstrate an ongoing ‘posture of denial’ by the state, which continues to minimize the consequences of the tests (‘Maohi Nui round table’, 2021, p. 1). The long history of secrecy, obfuscation and suppression of anti‐nuclear voices has both violated civil rights and exacerbated anxieties about potential harm (Barrillot, 2007; CESCEN, 2006; Danielsson & Danielsson, 1986; de Vries & Seur, 1997).…”

Section: The Consequences Of Nuclear Weapons Testing Are Not Captured...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In French Polynesia, Maohi people understand the environment as a source of ‘physical and spiritual nourishment as well as a profound sense of identity’ (Kahn, 2011, p. 4). Nuclear tests thus violate cultural and religious values of Pacific peoples, assaulting entwined natural and spiritual systems that sustain life (Barrillot, 2007; Teaiwa, 1994). The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, broadly supported across the region, asserted nuclear testing was an attack on the political sovereignty of Pacific peoples, a racist and colonial interference in their right to self‐determination (Maclellan & Chesneaux, 1998).…”

Section: The Consequences Of Nuclear Weapons Testing Are Not Captured...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Human Rights Fallout of Nuclear Detonations: Reevaluating ‘Threshold Thinking’ in Assisting Victims of Nuclear Testing

Bolton

2022

Global Policy

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Atmospheric nuclear test detonations conducted by USA, USSR, UK, France and China, 1945–1980, generated radioactive particles that were dispersed by weather patterns, returning to earth as fallout. People who lived ‘downwind’ face ongoing risks from their exposure to ionizing radiation, as well as psychological, social, cultural and political distress. However, testing states obscured these humanitarian consequences by claiming that fallout could be contained to specific spatial zones, that there are ‘thresholds’ below which radiation exposure has negligible health impacts and that socio‐political forms of harm should be disregarded. While the scientific consensus concludes fallout circulates in complex, nonlinear patterns; there is no safe level of radiation exposure; and nuclear testing can generate tremendous anxiety, what Liboiron calls ‘threshold thinking’ continues to underlie policies ostensibly assisting victims of nuclear weapons. This article offers examples from responses to French Pacific nuclear testing, showing how access to compensation and other assistance has often been conditioned on threshold qualifications that function to limit downwind communities’ access to assistance and remedy. Victim assistance and environmental remediation obligations in the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons offer opportunities to move beyond reductive policy logics to multifaceted, human rights‐based approaches to affected communities’ concerns.

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Section: Fallout May Disperse Beyond Preconceived Temporal‐spatial Bo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Consequences Of Nuclear Weapons Testing Are Not Captured...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Consequences Of Nuclear Weapons Testing Are Not Captured...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Consequences Of Nuclear Weapons Testing Are Not Captured...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Human Rights Fallout of Nuclear Detonations: Reevaluating ‘Threshold Thinking’ in Assisting Victims of Nuclear Testing

Bolton

2022

Global Policy

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“…109 This political problem of traditional, resilient culture has been demonstrated time and again through practices of "nuclear negationism" and "nuclear dissuasion" in the field of arms control and disarmament. 110 This culture of nuclear negationism became visible in several instances of nuclear testing when states sought to overtly cultivate a nationalist position while covertly denying victims' claims, refusing to offer any apology or compensation. This nuclear negationism especially entails denial of "violation of the rights of small people" living in "a society still marked by the traditions of the Oceanic civilizations" and living "far away from the majority populations of the states responsible for the tests."…”

Section: Ambivalence Of Human Rights Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Human Rights as a New Standard of Civilization in Weapons Control?

Mathur

2017

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political

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This article is an attempt to explore the intersecting dynamic of human rights and weapons control from a postcolonial perspective. It seeks to bring to the fore the contested terrain of human rights discourses within which grand proclamations of “Human Rights” as a “new standard of civilization” are being championed. At the same time in the field of security studies, an effort to rejuvenate “disarmament as humanitarian action” is mobilizing scholars and activists. It is in this context that this article seeks to problematize deployment of specifically human rights–based discourses to address the problem of weapons. In this effort, it encourages scholars and activists to take note of the imperial legacy of human rights–based and civilization-based discourses. It then expresses concern with how these civilizational discourses of differences between the West and the Rest are exploited to encourage a licentious use of human rights language to acquire and maintain weapons by state and nonstate actors. This article then proceeds to express concern with a shift from anthropocentric to anthropomorphic discourses on weapons that threatens to constitute and reinforce a stratified human civilization. These reflections are undertaken to encourage scholars to think more deeply about the pernicious nature of a human rights–based discourse in the context of weapons control. It is an invitation for postcolonial scholarship to think more deeply about the intersecting discourses of human rights and weapons control and its implications for the Global South.

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The military and the environment: The neglected core barrier

Seelarbokus¹

2021

International Environmental Cooperation and the Global Sustainability Capital Framework

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Human rights and the casualties of nuclear testing

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Human Rights Fallout of Nuclear Detonations: Reevaluating ‘Threshold Thinking’ in Assisting Victims of Nuclear Testing

Human Rights Fallout of Nuclear Detonations: Reevaluating ‘Threshold Thinking’ in Assisting Victims of Nuclear Testing

Human Rights as a New Standard of Civilization in Weapons Control?

The military and the environment: The neglected core barrier

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