As the Marshall Islands awaits an international court ruling on Wednesday Oct 05,2016 whether its lawsuit against three nuclear powers can proceed, many in the western Pacific nation question the merit of the David-versus-Goliath legal battle.
The country of 55,000 people is taking on India, Pakistan and Britain in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), arguing they have failed to comply with the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Initially the lawsuit was even more ambitious -- also including China, France, Israel, North Korea, Russia and the United States -- none of which recognised the ICJ's jurisdiction on the matter.
The Marshalls has a long, bitter history with nuclear weapons, making it one of the few nations that can argue with credibility before the ICJ about their impact.
The island nation was ground zero for 67 American nuclear weapons tests from 1946-58 at Bikini and Enewetak atolls, when it was under US administration.
The tests included the 1954 "Bravo" hydrogen bomb, the most powerful ever detonated by the United States, about 1,000 times bigger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
They fed into an apocalyptic zeitgeist in Cold War popular culture, giving a name to the bikini swimsuit and leading to the development of Japan's Godzilla movie monster
ICJ throws out Marshall Islands’ nuclear case against India, others
The UN’s highest court on Wednesday Oct 05,2016 threw out a bid by the tiny Marshall Islands to sue India for failing to halt the nuclear arms race, saying it lacked jurisdiction. “The court upholds the objection to jurisdiction raised by India… and finds that it cannot proceed to the merits of the case,” judge Ronny Abraham told the International Court of Justice in The Hague.After the hearings at the tribunal based in The Hague, the Marshalls said it will now “study the ruling” which is final and without appeal. “Obviously it’s very disappointing,” Marshall Islands lawyer Phon van der Biesen told
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