Effectiveness of Existing International Nuclear Liability Regime

The first convention was the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy (the Paris Convention) had been adopted on 29 July 1960 under the auspices of the OECD, and entered into force on 1 April 1968. In 1963,the Brussels Convention - supplementary to the Paris Convention- was adopted in to provide additional funds to compensate damage as a result of a nuclear incident where Paris Convention funds proved to be insufficient. The IAEA's first convention was the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage (the Vienna Convention) which adopted on 21 May 1963,and entered into force in 1977. Both the Paris Convention and the Vienna Convention laid down very similar nuclear liability rules based on the same general principles. The broad principles in these conventions can be summarized as follows: 1- The no-fault liability principle (strict liability) 2- Liability is channeled exclusively to the operator of the nuclear installation (legal channeling) 3- Only courts of the state in which the nuclear accident occurs would have jurisdiction (exclusive jurisdiction) 4- Limitation of the amount of liability and the time frame for claiming damages (limited liability) 5- The operator is required to have adequate insurance or financial guarantees to the extent of its liability amount (liability must be financially secured). 6- Liability is limited in time. Compensation rights are extinguished after specific time. 7- Non-discrimination of victims on the grounds of nationality, domicile or residence. Nuclear liability conventions objective is to provide adequate compensation payments to victims of a nuclear accident. Procedures for receiving these compensation are controlled by some rules such as exclusive jurisdiction, that rule need a further amendment to ensure the effectiveness of the exiting nuclear liability regime . Membership of the Conventions is a critical issue, because the existence of the conventions without being party to them especially from nuclear countries is ineffective , or in term of ratifying different conventions from neighboring countries. Optimum application of nuclear liability in Middle East could be achieved by establishing cooperative agreement for Arab states for nuclear energy applications to ensure that the issues of existing regime such as non-harmonization will be solved