Correction: The print version of this article that appeared in the Winter 2025 Nukewatch Quarterly included an outdated definition of nuclear perpetrators. It has been corrected below.
Editor’s Note: This October the World Nuclear Victims’ Forum in Hiroshima, Japan welcomed global hibakusha (nuclear victims) from nine different countries “to create a place of international solidarity… for nuclear victims and their allies, aiming for the elimination of the nuclear cycle and a world in which no more hibakusha are created.” Forum participants joined organizers from Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World adopting the “Hiroshima Declaration” and “Declaration on the Rights of World Nuclear Victims.” Updated from a 2015 declaration, the new statement is more inclusive, intersectional, and comprehensive than any other previous declaration adopted on the rights of nuclear victims. Selected excerpts of the “Hiroshima Declaration” follow.
“We define nuclear victims (hibakusha) as follows: All victims of radiation exposure and radioactive contamination, including victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; victims of nuclear testing; victims of human experiments using nuclear materials; not distinguishing between victims of military and civilian nuclear use, those impacted by uranium mining, milling, and enrichment activities and those impacted by radioactive contamination from nuclear labor and environmental contamination of nuclear weapons-related activities and entire processes of nuclear energy and nuclear fuel such as nuclear development, use and waste; victims of nuclear power plant disasters; and victims of depleted uranium weapons that are produced from radioactive waste….
“As long as war persists, the urge to use nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear war will only increase…. We recognize that unless we end the nuclear age, humanity could become a nuclear victim (hibakusha) at any time, and we reaffirm that nuclear and humanity cannot coexist.
“We acknowledge that uranium mining and milling, nuclear testing, and nuclear waste disposals have been conducted under ongoing colonial rule, discrimination, and oppression. We also acknowledge that use of nuclear technology is based on the social structure of inequality, discrimination, oppression, and exploitation, such as building nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel facilities in rural areas and forcing radiation exposure onto subcontracted workers at nuclear power plants. In particular, we acknowledge the history and current state of “nuclear colonialism” against Indigenous Peoples around the world, which excludes them from policy- making processes, violates their rights (including those related to their ancestral lands), oppresses them when they assert their individual or collective rights, and inflicts upon them the violence of radiation exposure, which can be considered a form of genocide.
“We define nuclear perpetrators as follows: This includes nuclear-armed countries and those who, through the use of nuclear weapons, have destroyed the foundations of human existence and created conditions that threaten the survival of all living things; the military-industrial-government-academia complex and its members, as well as the three nations that support it; United Nations organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) as well as institutions that have previously downplayed the effects of radiation exposure and concealed the true impacts of nuclear disasters, such as the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) led by pro-nuclear scientists; countries that promote nuclear energy policies; and shareholders and creditors of operators that caused radioactive contamination and manufacturers of nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities. We strongly demand that nuclear perpetrators be held accountable for their actions and be required to pay compensation to victims. We also call for the acknowledgement that the promotion, support, and investment of nuclear-related industries, including the export of nuclear power plants and the import of uranium, have the risk of violating human rights and destroying the environment….”
See the full Hiroshima Declaration and Declaration on the Rights of Nuclear Victims 2025.
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