Whose Responsibility is it Anyway? Environmental Obligations in the Nuclear Ban Treaty

Jun 30, 2017 | Doug Weir
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We’re just over halfway through the negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons and, while some campaigners and states seem generally happy with the progress being made on the draft text, there are too few voicing concerns that its environmental dimensions have been neglected. This matters because the treaty is intended first and foremost as a humanitarian instrument, and yet protecting fundamental human rights requires that the environment that people depend upon is also protected. But in addition to the mechanics of how this can best be achieved, there lies a deeper question – who is responsible for measures to protect the environment and safeguard those fundamental human rights – the polluter or the polluted?

Last month we and many others raised concerns that the language in the first draft of the treaty contained no clear obligations on states affected by contamination from the use or testing of nuclear weapons to assist those harmed or to undertake environmental remediation. This stood in stark contrast to previous humanitarian instruments on land mines, cluster munitions and explosive remnants of war. It also ran counter to one of the core tenets of human rights law, whereby the state hosting victims bears the primary duty to protect and uphold their rights.