Welcome to: Claims 4 Compensation

Marshall Island residents whose $563 million judgment against the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in 2001 has still not been paid are filing lawsuits in the United States for an additional $1 billion in redress. In 2002 and 2003, the Tribunal paid $2.2 million to Bikini and $1.6 million to Enewetak, but since then no payments have been made.

Following 67 nuclear tests,officials of Bikini and Enewetak Atolls filed land damage lawsuits and thousands of individuals filed personal injury claims totaling more than $5 billion with US courts.

These were dismissed in 1986 by a US judge who ruled that a $270 million settlement agreed to by the Compact of Free Association with the Marshall Islands directly compensated residents of the four most severely affected atolls. That judge also established the Nuclear Claims Tribunal to review claims for future nuclear damages.

A now-expired nuclear compensation agreement between the United States and Marshall Islands governments stipulated that if the Marshall Islands could prove 'changed circumstances' making the $270 million compensation already paid 'manifestly inadequate,' the US Congress would consider additional compensation. Officials from Islands' Nuclear Claims Tribunal charge that escalated numbers of cancers resulting from residents' exposure to radiation support new revealations concerning radiation and warrant the payment of additional compensation.

A petition seeking several billion dollars in additional nuclear test compensation and health care coverage has been stalled in Congress since 2000, and the current Administration has refuted that the US government should be responsible for further compensation. In commemorating the 60th anniversary of the relocation of the Bikini populace during nuclear testing, U.S. Ambassador to the Marshall Islands Greta Morris expressed the US government's "deepest gratitude to the people of the Marshall Islands for your contribution to security, peace and freedom through your participation in the nuclear testing program," but said that although the United States is 'concerned about the damage done to the Marshallese people and environment caused by the nuclear tests in the 1940s and 1950s,' the 1986 compensation package was a full and final settlement of all Marshall Islands claims."

Bikini Atoll is filing suit this month, and will be followed by Enewetak Atoll, whose residents received the Tribunal's first land damage award in April 2000. There is a six-year statute of limitations for such claims.

The third island involved in the US nuclear testing program, Rongelap Atoll, is also preparing to take legal action because its original land damage claim has not been settled. "If we get the Tribunal award by August, then we'll file later this year," according to Rongelap Mayor James Matayoshi. "We have no other choice. The message from the United States government is that 'changed circumstances' doesn't exist."