It is a great honour for me and for the organisation, the Chernobyl Children's Project, to be here among you today, especially as we are approaching the 21st anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident, that horrendous calamity that befell many of the citizens of northern Ukraine, western Russia and, most particularly, the innocent people of Belarus. I refer very deliberately to the peoples of Belarus in the sense that they did not have the nuclear plant on their territory, but suffered simply by being a close neighbour of Ukraine, where the reactor was sited. Because the winds happened to blow in a northerly direction at the time of the accident, 70% of the radioactive fall-out moved up, over and down on the innocents of Belarus. The most horrendous of nuclear disasters unfolded on 26 April 1986.
Most of my research and experiences are rooted in the Chernobyl accident victims of Belarus, particularly the children. We have done extra work in northern Ukraine and northern Russia, but we have concentrated our focus on Belarus because it received so much of the fall-out. We have been dealing with the Government and officials of Belarus since 1991 and over that time we have earned a certain respect and acknowledgment that has facilitated our work in the field. In 1999 we had the great honour of being awarded one of the most prestigious Belarussian awards, the Francysk Skaryna Award, for contributing to humanitarian work for the child victims in Belarus. In 2001 we became the only NGO working in the Chernobyl field to achieve official United Nations NGO status.
The award from Belarus definitely opened many doors in our dealings with officials over the subsequent years. At times it has been a difficult course to steer between the clear waters of humanitarian work and the rocks of politics and bureaucracy. The committee will know and appreciate the political pedigree of Belarus. It was and still is a difficult time for Belarussians as they try to direct their country forward into a new age of prosperity and modernity. They are anxious to move on from the spectre of Chernobyl and they have a tendency to reassure themselves and visitors that the issue has now been settled.
The Chernobyl Forum report on the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident perpetuated that thinking because it played down the effects of the accident. My colleagues and I in the project view this with a degree of scepticism and a certain amount of suspicion, bearing in mind Article III of an agreement signed in 1959 between the World Health Organisation and International Atomic Energy Agency. The agreement hinders the World Health Organisation in its freedom to produce material regarding the consequences of the Chernobyl accident without the agreement of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The stated primary objective of the IAEA is the promotion of nuclear power plants throughout the world. Asking the IAEA to research the health consequences of the Chernobyl accident is like asking the tobacco industry to research the health consequences of cigarette smoking.
That report is only a snapshot and not the full album of the consequences. To have the full album NGO expertise such as ours should be taken into account. Further snapshots should include the wealth of research and experience of medics, health professionals and scientists working on the ground in the affected regions and international experts such as the authors of the TORCH report — The Other Chernobyl report. These are Dr. Ian Fairlie, who serves on the secretariat of the committee of the Society for Radiological Protection and is an adviser to several UK Government departments and regulatory agencies, and Dr. David Sumner, a nuclear physicist who specialises in nuclear medicine. Other contributors are the very eminent Dr. Keith Bavistock, professor of health and ionising radiation in Finland. He was formerly head of the radiation protection division of the World Health Organisation.
I ask today what lessons we can take from the tragedy as we look back over the intervening 21 years. More importantly, what hope can we borrow from such a tale of woe that can inspire us to look forward? While this disaster is 21 years old, the consequences last to infinity. While other disasters are vying for the world's attention, the Chernobyl disaster has amost been relegated to history. If we do not remember past events, then we will surely make the same mistakes again. When it comes to nuclear power or nuclear weapons, we simply cannot afford that luxury. The people of the stricken regions of Belarus, western Russia and northern Ukraine have had to endure 21 years of living in what has become known as the world's most radioactive environment. They have been living with enforced displacement and evacuation. They have had to live with the world's complacency and ignorance, but worst of all they have had to watch their children being struck down. Every time a child dies, we lose a unique and special spirit.
I have seen at first hand the devastation caused by the disaster. I have held in my arms countless children who I truly and passionately believe died as a direct result of that terrible day. I am not a scientist or a medical expert but I am convinced these deaths, illnesses, traumas and heartbreaks are the direct consequences of the accident. I have seen the many deserted and poisoned ghost villages and towns. I have heard through my Geiger counter the drone of the radioactive death song of the land. I have travelled to the hospitals and orphanages where babies raise their twisted limbs and bodies, as if to cry out "Chernobyl did this to me". I have held broken hearted parents as they contemplate their ravaged son or daughter and heard them cry out, "Chernobyl is our 20th century Calvary".
Forgive me if I seem dramatic, but I am weary of sceptics asking me time and again to prove conclusively that a certain child died directly as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. I cannot, but I know that this child came from a highly contaminated village which does not exist any more, which is now completely covered in concrete, tar and cement, and has been removed from the map for the rest of time. I know that this village was located in the heart of a beautiful rural countryside which had no heavy industry and that this child developed medical conditions outside the norm in any reasonably healthy environment. Yes, I believe countless children have suffered and died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. To me, the Chernobyl accident has been an ethnic cleansing machine that respects no borders, no peoples, no age, no class, no religion, from which there is no emergency exit and no escape.
The Chernobyl accident survivors are facing a demographic disaster where science cannot yet completely assess the consequences. We are now seeing genetic changes, especially among those who were just five and six years of age in 1986 when the accident happened. These people are now having families and we are witnessing the effects of the disaster move to the next generation. This silent but deadly killer — radiation — is threatening the gene pool and the future of the Belarussian, western Russian and the Ukrainian peoples. What a tragedy. It is a stain on human history.
Like so many other countries on the tank paths of the Second World War, poor Belarus suffered desperate atrocities at the hands of the Nazis during that war. They suffered again during Stalin's reign, and then they suffered the Chernobyl accident — all in the same century. Unlike war and its ravages, unlike hunger and disease, radioactive contamination poisoning will never leave Belarus and the other affected countries. Its worst outcomes will still manifest themselves in the many decades to come.
Many people wonder what future generations will think about what we have done to the beautiful, fragile gift of this planet. Even the horror of global warming seems mild in comparison with the mountains of nuclear waste that we have accumulated and cannot dispose of. Unless our descendants devise a way to neutralise the mountains of contaminated waste, they will condemn us as irresponsible nuclear joy-riders, who attempted to ride a wild but savage beast, bare backed, halterless and blindfolded.
Some of the medical facts are a 200% increase in birth defects since 1986, according to experts from the University of Hiroshima who analysed data on newly born babies; some 30,000 stillborn foetuses in Belarus; a 200% increase in breast cancer; a 300% increase in oncology illnesses among children in Ukraine; a 40% increase in all kinds of cancers in Belarus between 1990 and 2000; and a 2,400% increase in the rate of thyroid cancer in Belarus. In the Gomel region of Belarus, which is closest to the reactor, there has been a 100% increase in this cancer. The World Health Organisation predicts that 50,000 children will develop this disease in this region alone. The normal rate of thyroid cancer is one in a million. Between 30,000 and 60,000 excess cancer deaths are predicted worldwide.
The US Academy of Sciences has stated that even low dose exposure to ionising radiation can cause cancer. Chernobyl released 200 times that of the combined releases from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The UN estimates that 7 million people in these three countries are affected by the disaster, half of whom are children under the age of four. The 7 million people living in the affected areas have received the highest known exposure to radiation in the history of the atomic age. About 5.5 million people, including more than a million children, continue to live in these radioactive contaminated lands. In Belarus, 2 million people, of whom 500,000 are children, still eat, sleep and drink in that contaminated zone of between one and 40 curies per square kilometre.
The Chernobyl Children's Project International is following the United Nations vision for going forward, particularly the need to assess current and predict future levels of human exposure and therefore contamination of foods and to take the necessary remedial actions and long-term counter-measures; to inform the general public in affected countries about the persistence of radioactive contamination in food products; to initiate large-scale monitoring of food, land and water projects; to further develop a system of environmental protection against radiation; and to move forward from a dependency culture through the creation and fostering of projects that are sustainable and long term, based on a developmental approach. We wish in the future to implement remediation measures and counter-measures in agricultural lands where poor soils have a high concentration of caesium transfer from soil to plants.
The Chernobyl Children's Project wishes to effect real change in the Chernobyl-affected regions. We are developing and facilitating long-term sustainable community-based solutions, providing effective principled humanitarian assistance, while advocating for the rights of the victims and survivors of that disaster. Since our establishment in 1991, we have gone from strength to strength. Through our efforts, the quality of life of thousands from the heart of the Chernobyl zone has been improved immeasurably. To date, I am very proud to say that we have donated €65 million worth of direct and indirect medical and humanitarian aid and have brought over 15,000 children from the heart of the Chernobyl zone to the heart and bosom of the people of Ireland.
The charity's efforts to relieve the suffering of those affected by Chernobyl have been made possible by the brave and unstinting commitment of thousands of volunteers from throughout our island who have given so generously of their time and energy. The project has developed aid programmes designed to give support and assistance to the victims and survivors to allow them to look to the future with hope and confidence. Irish Aid has come to our assistance in offering us advice, support and funding to help achieve our long-term objectives. For that we are so grateful.
I ask the committee to support our request for multi-annual funding from Irish Aid. This funding would allow us to concentrate our efforts on project work and not wholly on fundraising. The committee will appreciate how difficult it is constantly to have the begging bowl out, searching for finance and other resources to keep our charity alive. Good intentions are not enough and in this age, where there are constant demands on people's good will and purse strings, it is reassuring that the resources of our State can make funds available and lift any charitable organisation literally from its knees and propel it forward to a different level, where long-term quality work can be done, work that will last forever — not just piecemeal but solid, ongoing work. Any assistance the committee can give in this area would be most gratefully received.
In the same spirit, asking for the generosity of the committee, I raise another pressing issue. I returned this weekend with my colleague, Michael, from the Chernobyl area of Belarus. As part of our mission there, we had a series of diplomatic meetings and we were asked to act as an intermediary on behalf of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Belarus on the proposed intergovernmental agreement which they are now calling an accord. This accord relates to child protection and safety when children visit Ireland. This is an initiative we as a charity have lobbied for in Belarus for the past three years and I appeal to all parties to help bring this proposed accord to fruition. It would be such a noble task because we would be the first country to respond to this plea for support.
Over the years the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform has given tremendous practical support in helping us to move thousands of children from the contaminated zones to Ireland through the visa waiver scheme, which facilitated immediate clearance at Shannon Airport. However, in 2005 the Department withdrew this long-standing humanitarian facility. As a result, each individual child must have a visa issued by the Irish embassy in Moscow prior to travelling to Shannon. This is causing huge hardship and financial strain on local families and volunteer organisers. All of the children live a great distance from Moscow — it is actually a two-day journey, including a ten-hour train journey. The plight of the children, particularly those on the edges, in the asylums, orphanages or children from marginalised families in remote areas of the zones, is especially difficult and some children are being left behind. Can one imagine such a scene?
I am here today to beg earnestly that the committee should lobby at the door of the Tánaiste, asking that the facility be reinstated, given the hardships it has caused to the most vulnerable. The Tánaiste might revert to the original visa waiver scheme or employ extra staff to assist our already very hardworking embassy officials in Moscow who have been doing exemplary work throughout these years, so that they could travel to Minsk and fulfil the administrative tasks in situ.
I appeal to the committee to promote a world free from the scourge of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In this year, the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the 62nd anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the various other anniversaries of nuclear testing fall-out contamination, in the name of countless victims of the nuclear cycle I appeal to this honourable committee to guarantee the citizens of Ireland a nuclear free future and to encourage our nation to promote and support a nuclear free world, both civil and military.
If the Chernobyl disaster is to have some meaning and value, if the disaster at Hiroshima and Nagasaki can triumph through history, then let them act as loud and strident warnings of the perils of nuclear dalliance. There are serious and sinister moves afoot to rehabilitate the nuclear nightmare as the world panics to shore up against the effects of global warming and shortages of oil, gas and petrol. Let wisdom prevail. Let the devastating effects of the Chernobyl accident be a byword for a technology that is beyond our control.
The effect of radiation on millions of people is ethically unacceptable. There is no precedent in the history of mankind. It requires a new way of thinking, a new vision of how best to respond. It is thus the duty of the international community to look after those people and we can be the torch bearers.
The half-life of our memory of catastrophes such as the one at Chernobyl is only a miniscule fraction of the half-life of those radioactive elements released on 26 April 1986. Friends, the catastrophe continues and is far from over. Both the direct damage caused by radiation and the equally significant indirect economic, social, medical and environmental consequences continue to affect millions of people. Let us take heed of the consequences, in the name of future generations. We remember that we do not own this earth; we are merely borrowing it for our children and our children's childen.
