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It is 40 years since French secret service agents sank the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland, New Zealand.
On July 10 1985, a team of saboteurs used limpet mines to sink the ship that was in the region to protest a planned French nuclear test explosion at Muroroa. Greenpeace Photographer, Fernando Pereira, was drowned after being trapped in the sinking ship.
Two French agents were arrested by New Zealand police and convicted of manslaughter, but only served two years of a ten-year sentence in French custody. The French government initially denied involvement, but ended up being forced to apologise and pay compensation to Pereira’s family, Greenpeace and New Zealand. The bombing was approved at the highest levels of the French government.
However, this episode was only one incident in dangerous and irresponsible nuclear weapons-related conduct by the French state.
Denying nuclear harm
To this day France stands accused of covering up the harm caused by its nuclear detonations in the Pacific and Algeria.
After six months of hearings, a recent report from a parliamentary commission in France led by Polynesian MP, Mereana Reid Arbelot, (French Polynesia or Te Ao Maohi is part of France and sends MPs to the National Assembly in Paris) called for France to recognise the suffering and harm caused by its nuclear testing. Parliamentarians recognise in the report that France has lied about harms caused by its nuclear programme. Until 2025, in fact, the report notes that France maintained “a reluctant attitude” towards dealing with the health consequences of the tests. The report also called on France to compensate all people from Polynesia for the harm and damage caused in the region and to prevent any repetition of the harm to people’s health, the environment and society.
The Director of ICAN France, Jean-Marie Collin, who has specialist knowledge of nuclear weapons commented: “The concept of “nuclear justice” has entered the French parliamentary debate through the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry. This represents a significant step forward, as French diplomacy has consistently opposed this notion, which is closely linked to provisions in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. In both 2023 and 2024, France even voted against a United Nations resolution titled “Addressing the legacy of nuclear weapons”, alongside Russia, North Korea, and the United Kingdom, despite the fact that 174 other States supported it and it explicitly acknowledged the concept of nuclear justice”.
Proposing new proliferation
Despite its own record, France has been one of the loudest critics in recent years of Iran’s nuclear programme and failed to condemn nuclear-armed Israel and the United States for their recent illegal attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Instead, Paris called on Iran to return to talks and to recommit to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
This call came against the background of France’s offer earlier this year to mimic the so-called US “nuclear umbrella” and use its nuclear weapons in defence of other European countries which would breach the spirit, if not the letter of the NPT.
Past proliferation
Israel’s nuclear arsenal is a sensitive issue for France given it was instrumental in the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Israel by providing Tel Aviv with a nuclear reactor in the 1950s, which was key to its development of nuclear weapons.
France, although one of the last nuclear-armed countries to join the NPT, is legally bound to get rid of its nuclear weapons under Article 6 of the treaty. After the end of the Cold War, it did reduce the size of its arsenal, but it is set to expand it with more nuclear-armed aircraft, and is currently modernising its nuclear weapons systems.
Post colonial pressure
While not honouring its decades-old disarmament commitments under the NPT, France has at the same time vehemently opposed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Having failed to block the treaty’s adoption eight years ago, it continues to pressure other countries to shun the treaty, including countries it had formerly colonised. However, that has not stopped many from joining the treaty anyway, sending a signal that nuclear weapons, no matter who possesses them, are incompatible with legitimate security strategies.
In the minority
The countries that have already joined the TPNW significantly outnumber the countries that support nuclear weapons (the nuclear-armed states and their allies that endorse the use of nuclear weapons). The TPNW states regard the possession of nuclear weapons by the nine nuclear-armed states as a threat to their security given the devastating global impact any use of nuclear weapons, by accident or intentionally, would have on all countries.
ICAN’s Programme Coordinator and expert on nuclear weapons, Susi Snyder, said: “Despite wanting to look like one of the good guys, the French state has behaved like a nuclear delinquent for decades. It was still exploding nuclear weapons in the 90s, and while it has dismantled its nuclear testing sites since then, has just barely begun to admit to the decades of harm it caused.”
Survivor stories
For decades, survivors of nuclear testing around the world have been calling on their governments for justice. United, they've pushed for recognition, compensation and environmental remediation and achieved the first international treaty to require countries that join it to help those affected by nuclear weapons use and testing and to take steps to address contaminated environments: the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
FRANCE’S NUCLEAR ARSENAL
First developed in 1960 independently of the United States
Current arsenal consists of 290 warheads which are deployed on submarines and aircraft
France stopped exploding nuclear weapons in 1996, having conducted 210 detonations in Algeria and the South Pacific before that. For more on the impact of French nuclear testing, including the stories of survivors, see ICAN’s Nuclear Testing Impacts map.