On Aug. 29, 1991, Kazakhstan made a decision that would shape not only its own history, but also its place in the world. By decree, the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site was permanently closed. Dauren Aben. Photo credit:Dauren Aben’s personal archive Thirty-five years later, the significance of that decision has acquired an even broader meaning.
Between 1949 and 1989, 456 nuclear explosions were conducted at Semipalatinsk, exposing local communities to radioactive contamination and leaving a legacy that continues across generations. The human and environmental consequences cannot be reduced to statistics.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted this year, “their suffering is not history. It is a warning.” The closure of Semipalatinsk was therefore much more than an administrative act. It was a political choice: Kazakhstan chose to end nuclear testing even at a time when the Soviet Union still existed and the country’s own future was uncertain.
That choice became one of the foundations of independent Kazakhstan’s foreign policy. The legacy of Semipalatinsk also belongs to civil society. The Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, founded in 1989 and led by poet and public figure Olzhas Suleimenov, helped turn opposition to nuclear testing into a powerful public cause.
Demonstrations and peace marches in Kazakhstan and abroad helped create the political momentum that made the closure possible. Kazakhstan subsequently renounced the world’s fourth-largest nuclear arsenal, joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear-weapon state, ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), helped establish the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and worked with international partners to strengthen the global nonproliferation regime.
In 2009, Kazakhstan proposed that Aug. 29 become the UN International Day against Nuclear Tests. The General Assembly adopted the initiative unanimously. The date thus became more than a national commemoration: it became part of the global calendar of nuclear disarmament.
But Kazakhstan’s contribution did not stop with declarations. Today, five stations on its territory form part of the CTBT’s International Monitoring System, providing real-time data for the global verification regime. Kazakhstan also hosts the IAEA Low Enriched Uranium Bank at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Oskemen, creating an important international mechanism for ensuring access to nuclear fuel while reducing incentives for countries to develop their own enrichment capabilities.
The country has also sought to give the humanitarian legacy of nuclear testing a stronger place on the international agenda. Together with Kiribati, another country profoundly affected by nuclear testing, Kazakhstan has led efforts under the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to advance victim assistance and environmental remediation.
In 2022, the two countries proposed the establishment of an international trust fund to help affected communities and contaminated territories. The initiative has since developed into a broader international process. This is an important point. Nuclear justice is not simply about remembering the past.
It is about ensuring that those who continue to live with the consequences of nuclear testing receive meaningful assistance and that contaminated environments receive sustained attention. For Kazakhstan, the moral authority to speak on this issue comes from experience, but that experience also carries a continuing responsibility toward affected communities.