Marshall Islands leaders asserted that countries where the nuclear weapons are being modernized are committing a “flagrant denial of human justice.” The suit does not call for any financial compensation, only the beginning of actions that would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world.

“Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons, and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities,” Tony de Brum, the country’s foreign minister, said in a statement to Agence France-Presse.