- Mary Dickson, a Salt Lake City downwinder and thyroid cancer survivor, was invited to testify at the U.N.'s first-ever International Meeting on Victim Assistance and Environmental Remediation after Deseret News profiled her.
- Representatives of dozens of countries shared testimony, but nuclear-armed states were absent.
- Recommendations from the meeting will be compiled in a report by the U.N. secretary-general for the General Assembly's consideration.
When she was in her 20s, Mary Dickson was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which the U.S. government has now acknowledged resulted from fallout from nuclear weapons testing in Nevada when she was a child. Although she lived hundreds of miles away in Salt Lake City, she was one of an unknown number of downwinders who “ate vegetables from the garden, drank fresh milk from a local dairy, splashed in rainwater. (Who) mixed sugar with snow, pretending it was ice cream.”
She would learn that the nuclear fallout from the Cold War was an unseen reality that later led to serious health consequences now deemed by Congress and the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to be the result of nuclear weapons testing over years.
The Deseret News told Dickson’s story in July and, as a result, she was invited to speak at the first-ever Meeting on Victim Assistance and Environmental Remediation, convened by the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. Headquarters in New York. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit, 501(c)(3) that is recognized by the U.N. as a “peace messenger organization” with U.N. consultative status since 1998, served as a civil society coordinator for the meeting.
When people think of nuclear weapons, it’s likely they think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many still think all downwinders of U.S. nuclear weapons testing lived in southern Utah, receiving fallout from the Nevada Test Site.
The reality is more than 2,000 nuclear weapons tests were conducted worldwide by multiple nations.
Masako Wada, assistant secretary general of the group Nihon Hidankyo, which won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, and Karipbek Kuyukov, a Kazakh artist and anti-nuclear activist born without arms as a result of radiation exposure from Soviet nuclear testing, were among opening speakers.
Kuyukov warned that “if radicals were to gain access to one nuclear weapon, the whole world would go up in flames.” In concluding his remarks, he wished families “peace and well-being.”
A world of hurt
The Deseret News traveled to New York to hear the discussion on Tuesday, which included statements from representatives of dozens of countries, a diverse group that included, among others, Mexico, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, Thailand, New Zealand, South Africa, Marshall Islands, Burundi, Norway, Vietnam, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Malta and Canada. A representative of the Holy See noted that God-given dignity can never be surrendered and that care for communities cannot be separated from care for the environment, thoughts repeated in different ways throughout the eight-hour hearing.
“If I’ve learned anything from being a survivor it is this: We all live downwind.”
— Mary Dickson, thyroid cancer survivor and Salt Lake City downwinder
The gathering was initially requested by representatives of Kiribati and Kazakhstan, two nations impacted by international nuclear weapons testing originating from the Cold War. The goal was to gather testimony to explore ways to provide victim assistance and environmental remediation.
Speakers were from member states, observer states, U.N. agencies and civil societies, including scientists, academia and communities affected by nuclear weapons. The World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross were among those who both spoke and listened.
Absent were representatives of the U.N. member states that tested nuclear weapons in the Cold War and beyond.
Recounting the toll
“How were we to know that radioactive fallout was coming down with that rain and snow, contaminating our food and embedding itself into our bodies? We trusted our government when it told us there was no danger,” Dickson said.
Her thyroid and surrounding lymph nodes were removed. Part of her treatment included drinking radioactive iodine. She was the radioactive material the sign on her hospital door warned others was dangerous.
She developed more tumors and had more surgery later and could not have children.
“I have been sliced, radiated and scooped out. I have buried and mourned the dead, comforted and advocated for the living and worried with each ache, pain and lump that I am getting sick again,” she said.
She said she survived, while many others, including her older sister, died.
At one point, the two had listed scores of people they knew of from just their childhood neighborhood who got cancer or other serious, linked illnesses. They listed people who were infertile and children with leukemia and birth defects. Her sister’s name went on the list.
Her younger sister is battling a rare cancer that has spread, she said.
Dickson was among speakers advocating both compassion and compensation, noting “it’s not simply about money. No amount can give us back our health or the loved ones we’ve buried. Nor can it ease the sorrow we carry.”
What compensation says, she continued, is “we acknowledge what happened to you. We believe you. You never should have been harmed.”
Dickson asked that medical support be part of “any meaningful victim assistance,” noting harm didn’t stop with the nuclear weapons testing and that downwinders are still being diagnosed. Cancers return. Complications arise. She called medical bills “crippling,” adding that “we should not have to struggle to pay for healthcare that actions of governments made necessary.”
She noted the failures of existing compensation programs, starting with the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, which she said left out many forms of cancer and covered a very narrow geographic area. A new law expanded RECA and increased compensation, giving those who can prove they lived in the designated areas and had certain diseases until the end of 2027 to file a claim. But she and others said it, too, contains carve-outs that many believe exclude some downwinders, as if radiation stopped at county lines. “Government maps showed how far the jet streams carried the fallout,” Dickson said. “They knew it spread across the country far beyond the boundaries they drew.”
Under the expanded RECA, “countless communities are still excluded by arbitrary lines on a map or because their disease isn’t the right one.”
Dickson was also among those who called for studies and remediation on “contaminated lands where people still live, grow food and raise their children. These are not acts of charity. They are obligations of justice.”
She concluded: “If I’ve learned anything from being a survivor it is this: We all live downwind.”
Pleas for international help
Kazakhstan was subjected to extensive Soviet nuclear testing, while the United States and United Kingdom conducted nuclear tests that impacted Kiribati. U.N. Resolution 80/56, adopted in December 2025, established the meeting’s format and participation procedures. It followed a resolution in 2024 that first asked the secretary-general to convene the meeting.
Recommendations raised during the meeting will help inform the outcome document distributed afterward by the U.N. secretary-general.
Among recurring themes:
- More research and transparency about what scientists have already learned and a plea to share them with others.
- The need to ban use of nuclear weapons.
- A full accounting of what happened and who was hurt worldwide as countries tested nuclear weapons.
- Financial assistance and environmental remediation for those who suffered as a result of the testing.
- A plea to include affected communities in discussions of what they need.
- The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came up numerous times, with calls for more nations to sign on and the need for monitoring.
The treaty is only legally binding to states that have signed — and none of the nuclear-armed states have.
Said Michael Ramos of the United Religions Initiative, “There is much we know about the effects despite the withholding of much information, sometimes over decades: The immediate and long-term effects of radiation and radioactive fallout, including increased rates of cancer, with large areas of land having remained radioactive for decades. The catastrophic health crises, loss of culture and livelihood, physical, economic and social displacement and intergenerational trauma must be recognized and investigated further by the relevant scientific disciplines, in conjunction with the General Assembly-approved scientific panel on the effects of a nuclear conflict.”
“Behind every policy, every treaty and every discussion about nuclear weapons, there are people, families, communities and generations living with the consequences of decisions they did not make.”
— Oemwa Johnson, resident of Christmas Island whose family is affected by nuclear weapons testing
In noting the need to bar use of nuclear weapons, Ramos cited data showing a “total of $119 billion for nuclear weapons programs and preparation for use was spent by the nine nuclear-weapons states in 2025, a 19% increase over 2024.”
Countries that have tested nuclear weapons, besides the U.S., are China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the U.K. Israel is believed to have nuclear warheads but has neither denied or confirmed. Russia, U.S., China, France and U.K. are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Oemwa Johnson, an affected community member from Christmas Island, said for her family, like others in the Marshall Islands, Kazakhstan, Japan and elsewhere, nuclear weapons testing is not simply a point in the past, but a legacy bearing concrete concerns for health and environment and the well-being of generations to come.
“Behind every policy, every treaty and every discussion about nuclear weapons, there are people, families, communities and generations living with the consequences of decisions they did not make,” she said.
Her plea was for “greater investment in independent scientific and medical research and long-term health monitoring,” the work “transparent and inclusive.” She also asked for help from other countries for small islands and developing states that lack resources to fix harm they did not cause to people and the environment.
Many speakers, including Molly McGinty, program director of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said women and children bore a “disproportionate burden of harm.”
Her group’s recommendations include support for the World Health Organization’s renewed mandate to study the health effects of nuclear weapons and war. She said the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa and Vanuatu asked for a resolution that was “overwhelmingly” adopted by the 2025 World Health Assembly to document the full scope of harm and make recommendations on victim assistance and environmental remediation.
“All existing programs fall short of the scale of need and that the nuclear armed states bear special responsibility,” she said.
Among those without adequate resources is the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Isaiha Mongombe Mombilo, chairman of the Congolese Civil Society of South Africa, who noted many of his countrymen helped mine uranium with their bare hands for the Manhattan Project and other nuclear weapons efforts, not knowing the risk. He wants“official recognition of Congolese people as the primary affected community and victims of the nuclear age.”
Will the meeting prompt change?
Deseret News asked Ivana Nikolić Hughes, president of the foundation, how much impact the meeting, while both emotional and well-attended by a diverse group of countries, could have — particularly since nuclear-armed states didn’t attend.
She said it was a big deal that so many countries decided to speak. She hopes it will be a starting point to a potent outcome of countries committing to establish an international trust fund for victims of nuclear weapons testing.
And the General Assembly will consider recommendations from the meeting, she said.
In her statement, Hughes said that because making things right is hard does not mean it should not be done. Besides financial assistance, there’s a need for research into decontamination and shared scientific data.
Another RECA?
As a side note, in the U.S., a new bill has been introduced in Congress to expand RECA coverage to include some states and territories that have been left out and larger shares of some that are partially included. While claims under the existing expanded RECA are due by the end of 2027, Dickson said that’s not far away and it takes time to gather documentation and put an application together.
More details on the expanded RECA now in place can be found in U.S. Department of Justice RECA Guidelines. The just-proposed bill is H.R. 10115, available on the Congress.gov website.