The people of the Pacific region have suffered widespread and persisting radioactive contamination, displacement and transgenerational harm from nuclear test explosions. This paper reviews radiation health effects and the global impacts of nuclear testing, as context for the health and environmental consequences of nuclear test explosions in Australia, the Marshall Islands, the central Pacific and French Polynesia. The resulting humanitarian needs include recognition, accountability, monitoring, care, compensation and remediation. Treaty architecture to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons and provide for their elimination is considered the most promising way to durably end nuclear testing. Evidence of the humanitarian impacts of nuclear tests, and survivor testimony, can contribute towards fulfilling the humanitarian imperative to eradicate nuclear weapons.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) will not be effective until all the 44 states listed in its Annex 2 ratify it. A special link has been established between the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the CTBT. The disarmament obligation set by Article VI of the NPT, which has not yet been complied with, remains highly controversial. The relevant subsequent practice of the states parties to the NPT shows that the ratification of the CTBT is to be considered the first of the practical steps towards compliance with Article VI. However, as the practical steps do not set any legally binding norms, there is no legal obligation to ratify the CTBT, not even for the 44 states listed in Annex 2 whose ratification is essential. The paper deals with the position of nuclear powers party to the NPT that have not yet ratified the CTBT (most prominently the US and China) and demonstrates that these states should at least provide detailed motivation for their conduct. Otherwise, other states parties to the NPT could consider them as not complying in good faith with Article VI of the NPT and invoke the inadimplenti non est ademplendum rule to justify breaches of their own obligations under the same treaty.

In 1954, following the US explosion of a large thermonuclear device in the South Pacific, Prime Minister Nehru of India led the first international call for a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing. It took until 10 September 1996 for the General Assembly of the United Nations to adopt the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). As at the end of April 1997, it had been signed by 142 states including the five nuclear-weapon states.

Last year, for the second time in a little over 20 years, New Zealand asked the International Court of Justice to adjudicate the legality of French nuclear testing. This followed the announcement by the new President of France to the effect that the moratorium that his predecessor had put in place three years earlier, and had promised that France would continue to observe, would be terminated. The action by the New Zealand government was based on a unanimous decision by all political parties in New Zealand. This action reflected the anger of the countries in the South Pacific at the fact that a nuclear-weapon state was still prepared, in 1996, to explode nuclear devices in fragile marine environments on the other side of the world. In short, New Zealand wanted to utilize all available opportunities to persuade France not to proceed.