Launching Youth Fusion’s Latest Report
Youth Fusion is proud to release our latest publication:
“Addressing the Cultural and Systemic Challenges in Realizing Human Rights in Nuclear-Affected Marshallese Communities.”
This report brings forward the voices of youth while framing nuclear harm as an ongoing human rights crisis with intergenerational consequences. It challenges the normalization of nuclear violence, espeically in the Marshall Islands and makes a bold call for new accountability mechanisms at the UN level.
Why This Report?
Inspired by the OHCHR Call for Input A/HRC/57/26 on “Addressing the challenges and barriers to the full realization of the human rights of the people of the Marshall Islands stemming from the State’s nuclear legacy” Youth Fusion’s Research Team dedicted several months in interviewing and researching on Marshallese expierence of destructive nuclear testing. It was important for us to highlight:
- Generations of Marshallese still suffer from displacement, illness, and cultural loss.
- Diaspora youth face identity crises while living between two worlds.
- Women disproportionately endure health impacts and cultural ostracization.
- Communities live with radioactive contamination and the erosion of self-determination.
Our report highlights these realities, not as “past events,” but as violations that extend into the present — and threaten the rights of future generations.
What’s Inside
Highlights from the report include:
- Testimonies from Marshallese youth and women, revealing deeply personal impacts of nuclear testing.
- Analysis of the unique challenges faced by youth in the diaspora, struggling with identity, belonging, and cultural sovereignty.
- Documentation of how women’s health, dignity, and social roles were disproportionately violated by nuclear harm.
- A generational call for accountability beyond compensation — restoring land, culture, and rights.
- Legal arguments on how nuclear harm violates international human rights treaties.
- A recommendation for the appointment of an OHCHR Special Envoy on the rights of future generations in nuclear-affected communities.
Our Call to Action
The report recommends that the UN take decisive steps to address the nuclear legacy by:
- Appointing a Special Envoy on the Human Rights Impacts of Nuclear Weapons – ensuring long-term, intergenerational justice remains central to nuclear-related policy.
- Appointing a Special Rapporteur on Nuclear-Affected Communities – to connect affected regions, amplify survivor and youth voices, and push for coordinated global solutions.
This dual mechanism would reframe nuclear harm as what it is: an ongoing, preventable human rights crisis.
🎥 Watch the Authors Ayleen Roy, Gabriel McGuire, Yasmina El Moussaid and Camilla Braito – hear directly from the youth voices behind this initiative!
Download the full PDF !
We also had the chance to present our report on August 29 International Day Against Nuclear Tests, which established to raise awareness on the effects of nuclear explosions and the need to end them to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world. The date also commemorates Kazakhstan’s historical decision in 1991 to close the Soviet nuclear test site on its territory.
This year’s commemoration event highlighted the human rights dimensions of nuclear weapons and international obligations to prevent their use. On this occasion, Youth Fusion’s Research Team presented this Report. This event was organised by the Permanent Mission of Kazakhstan to the UN in Geneva and Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND), supported by the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Marshall Islands to the UN in Geneva, Basel Peace Office, and World Future Council.
