Meet Survivors of Nuclear Testing Calling on U.N. to Secure Just Compensation & Prohibit New Weapons

The second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the U.N. brought together survivors of nuclear testing, and we speak with two of them, who are also 2023 laureates of the Nuclear-Free Future Awards.

The second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the U.N. in New York brought together survivors of nuclear testing from around the world, and we are joined by two of them. Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross is a parliamentarian in French Polynesia, a former French colony in the southern Pacific Ocean that served as a testing ground for France’s nuclear experiments. Her own leukemia is a legacy of the 193 French atomic tests in the South Pacific and motivated her activism to ensure the stories of the victims are remembered and to pressure the French government to accept responsibility and to provide medical and financial support. We also speak with Benetick Kabua Maddison, a U.S.-based Marshallese activist whose work focuses on the legacy of the U.S. atomic tests conducted in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, and the ongoing health, environmental and cultural consequences. He is executive director of the Marshallese Educational Initiative, based in Arkansas. They are both 2023 laureates of the Nuclear-Free Future Awards.