Ambassador Hamad Alkaabi, UAE Permanent Representative
to the IAEA, along with other eight Contracting Parties, co-hosted a side-event
on ‘Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage,’ on
27 September to help coordinate discussion on the benefits of the Treaty. Other
co-sponsors include: Argentina, India, Japan, Montenergro, Morocco, Romania,
and United States.
The UAE has been at the forefront of efforts to develop an advance international nuclear liability regime, and joined the CSC in July 2014, having previously concluded other relevant international instruments that govern this area. Speaking at the event, Ambassador Alkaabi said: “The Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, having entered into force in April 2015, offers a overarching mechanism for establishing a global nuclear liability regime.”
The CSC
aims at increasing the amount of compensation available in the event of a
nuclear accident through public funds to be made available by the Contracting
Parties on the basis of their installed nuclear capacity and UN rate of
assessment. It also aims at establishing treaty relations among States that
belong to the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage,
the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy or
neither of them, while leaving intact the 1988 Joint Protocol that establishes
treaty relations among States that belong to the Vienna Convention or the Paris
Convention UAE has joined the 1997 Protocol to Amend the Vienna Convention and joined the CSC in July 2014 the UAE Federal Law No 4 of 2012, Concerning Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage was established to determine civil liability and compensation for nuclear damage in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It represents a transposition into UAE law of obligations contained in nuclear liability conventions and incorporates the fundamental principles contained in those conventions
Download the text of Federal Law
by Decree No. 4 of 2012 concerning Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage
The UAE law
regulates the provisions and determines the scope of civil liability and
compensation in the event of a nuclear accident in the country, As well as
determining that nuclear facility operators are solely and exclusively liable
for damages arising from a nuclear accident, whether or not the operator is at
fault, it also sets a limit on the operator's liability of 450 million Special
Drawing Rights), equivalent to roughly 2.5 billion UAE dirhams or $694 million.
