The Indigenous World 2026: Republic of the Marshall Islands

Written on 22 April 2026. Posted in Republic of the Marshall Islands

The Indigenous Peoples of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) have inhabited Jolet jen Anij (gifts from God) since time immemorial. Marshall Islands peoples are navigators and the culture is matrilineal. Spanish explorers were the first European visitors to RMI in the 15^th century. John Marshall, a British explorer after whom the islands are named, sailed through in 1799. Spain claimed the islands as a territory in 1874. American missionaries arrived and RMI became a German protectorate in 1885. At the start of World War I, Japan took control of the islands. The Indigenous Peoples pursued sovereignty and became part of the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) administered by the United States of America at the conclusion of World War II.^[1] RMI is still deeply marked by the legacy of the crimes committed against its people by the US, which conducted 67 nuclear tests on Bikini and Enewetak Atolls between 1946 and 1958, while under the US administration.^[2]

RMI came into being as a sovereign nation when the constitution was adopted on 1 May 1979. RMI negotiated for their right to self-determination through a Compact of Free Association from the US-administered UN Trusteeship, entering into force for full independence on 21 October 1986. RMI is one of only four atoll nations in the world and joined the UN in 1991. RMI consists entirely of low-lying coral atolls with 29 separate atolls containing 1,225 islands, 870 reef systems and 160 species of coral. Majuro is the capital and the RMI is ruled by a constitutional government and functions as a parliamentary democracy in free association with the US.^[3]

The resilience of RMI is evident in its culture and the long history of resistance to colonialism and imperial designs that have denied its people their fundamental dignity, including the legacy of US nuclear testing. Today, RMI is widely recognized as a frontline state in the global climate crisis. The RMI demands justice through bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, taking a leading role in the Pacific Islands Forum and at the UN –particularly within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Human Rights Council– leading on resolutions to create new special procedures and thematic studies important to Indigenous Peoples and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).^[4]

This article is part of the 40^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. Find The Indigenous World 2026 in full here

Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is continuing its role as an Indigenous Peoples participating in the active promotion and protection of human rights at the national, regional and global level, demanding historical remedy while also defending future generations.

Republic of the Marshall Islands leads the Pacific on global UN human rights body

In 2025, RMI led the Asia-Pacific region at the UN, securing a seat among the 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, Switzerland.^[5] RMI represented Indigenous rights and island priorities in the three sessions of the HRC in 2025. RMI will serve on the HRC from 2025 to 2027.

Indigenous issues in RMI also represent the historical and most pressing future challenges for humanity. RMI has built upon its previous accomplishments in the highest UN human rights charter body from its earlier term from 2020-2022 and changed the landscape of the HRC, becoming the only Pacific Islands Nation to serve in the body dedicated to overseeing UN processes of investigative mechanisms and advising the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).^[6]

RMI has built on its first term, earlier in the 2020s, championing climate change and nuclear justice and representing Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the face of the multi-layered challenges of colonialism. As President Hilda Heine noted at the UN General Assembly: “Our own unique legacy and complex challenges with nuclear testing impacts, with climate change, and other fundamental challenges, informs our perspective, that the voices of the most vulnerable must never be drowned out.”^[7]

Beyond its own case, RMI has been a champion for Indigenous Peoples who are enduring the nuclear legacy whereby weapons were tested on Indigenous lands, impacting Indigenous Peoples around the planet. RMI has sponsored resolutions at the HRC to address the nuclear legacy from a human rights-based approach.^[8]

President Heine addressed the HRC, sharing some of the human rights violations faced over the decade that continue today, given that nuclear impacts persist forever: “The Marshallese people were misled, forcibly displaced and subjected to scientific experimentation without their consent.”^[9]

Connecting climate change and human rights for dignity and nuclear legacy for national liberation

RMI is extremely vulnerable to the multiple impacts of climate change that are facing Island cultures and Indigenous Peoples in the Pacific, including sea-level rise, severe cyclones, warming seas with coral bleaching and drought, among other rights violations. RMI raises climate change and human rights at the HRC, reflecting the real life and death situation Indigenous Peoples face in the current climate emergency facing the atoll nation.

As a member of the HRC from 2025 to 2027, RMI will provide leadership on two major landmark resolutions with cross-regional core groups, underlining the importance of issues to Indigenous Peoples around the planet. RMI led fellow Indigenous Nations on renewing the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change and continuing human rights capacity building and technical assistance to address the nuclear legacy.^[10]

On the climate emergency, RMI created a broad cross-regional core group comprising Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Indigenous Peoples, including climate justice allies of the Bahamas, the European Union, Fiji, Panama, Paraguay and Sudan, illustrating how the climate crisis affects all citizens of the world. As President Heine noted: “Climate change continues to pose a profound threat to our livelihoods, freshwater resources, and cultural heritage while intensifying the risks of natural disasters and displacement.”^[11]

On the nuclear legacy, the core group of Indigenous Pacific Islands of Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa and Vanuatu recognizes the need to address the human rights violations of the past and the generational human rights implications that continue today and will persist into the future. President Heine spoke with authority for all affected peoples: “We have a collective responsibility to ensure that the human rights challenges and suffering that our people have endured and continue to endure, are never inflicted on others for the sake of these abominable weapons.”^[12]

RMI has truly delivered not only for its Indigenous constituents but for all Indigenous Peoples at the HRC since it opened its UN Mission in 2019 and is making an immediate impact as a champion for Indigenous rights. RMI is also involved beyond the global level, meeting with citizens on the ground, even in the diaspora from Hawaiʻi to the continent of the United States. In partnership with the OHCHR, and with its National Nuclear Commission, RMI hosted a meeting to focus on truth and reconciliation rooted in human rights.^[13]

Regarding the impacts of climate change, RMI continued to be a leader in multiple global spaces, protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples in their ancestral homelands. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion on the imminent crisis and the rights of future generations, upholding the demands for climate justice.^[14]

RMI and Palau issued a pioneering call at the UN General Assembly to seek an advisory opinion on climate change from the ICJ on the reduction of carbon emissions by industrialized nations.^[15] RMI understands that Indigenous Peoples have been placed on the altar of sacrifice for various reasons, including both nuclear poisoning in the name of security and peace as well as currently rising tides and extreme weather in the name of development and progress.

At the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in Honiara, Solomon Islands, RMI’s leadership on Indigenous Peoples’ rights was recognized, especially the right to self-determination. RMI raised both cases of Kanaky (New Caledonia) and West Papua at the meetings, calling for human rights to be a permanent theme addressed at the annual Leaders Meeting.^[16]

Universal Periodic Review: a Pacific voice defends its human rights record

RMI participated in the fourth cycle of the Universal Periodic Review by sending a high-level delegation to Geneva, and presented its fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in November in the more than three-hour peer review by fellow UN members on 10 November.^[17] The RMI UPR was rooted in an Indigenous participatory and inclusive human rights-based approach coordinated by the Ministry of Culture and Internal Affairs in close collaboration with UN agencies, local community associations and national government ministries.

RMI ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2020 and, in February 2025, submitted comments on a draft environmental crime policy, raising ecocide at the ICC in The Hague. Furthermore, on 03 March 2025, the 37^th Anniversary of Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day, RMI signed the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.^[18]

The Marshall Islands human rights-based approach to global climate and sustainability commitments

RMI is also ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ rights from a human rights-based approach in the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). RMI agreed to a Voluntary National Review (VNR) in 2025, to be held at the United Nations High-Level Political Forum in 2026, where RMI will present a report on the status of the SDGs in all islands.^[19] RMI will discuss Indigenous rights and share the latest developments in the global goals on the ground, covering implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and various UN human rights covenants and conventions. RMI is primarily matrilineal, whereby land and lineage pass down through women. For SDG 5, RMI will therefore share its cultural foundations for advancing gender equality. RMI will also share the steps taken to create a National Human Rights Institution, reflecting the Paris Principles for greater coordination of international instruments, including the UN SDGs.^[20] For SDGs 13 to 15, at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 31^st Conference of the Parties (COP 31) held in Belem, Brazil, RMI presented its third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) 2031-35.^[21] RMI also created its first national sanctuary in 2025, preventing biodiversity loss around the Bikar and Bokak atolls.^[22] And, finally, RMI joined nations calling for a moratorium on all deep-sea bed mining at the UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) in July 2025 in Nice, France.^[23]

Joshua Cooper is a lecturer at the University of Hawai’i’s Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies and the University of New South Wales Diplomacy Training Program. He also teaches at the Global Leadership Academy for Human Rights Advocacy and serves as the Executive Director of Oceania Human Rights and CEO of The GOOD Group, a global strategic litigation & liberation movement.

This article is part of the 40^th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. Find The Indigenous World 2026 in full here

Notes and references

^[1] Pacific RISA. (N.d.). Republic of the Marshall Islands. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.pacificrisa.org/places/republic-of-the-marshall-islands/

^[2] The Republic of the Marshall Islands and National Nuclear Commission reply to call for inputs of the Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights. (2025). Access to Justice and Effective Remedies in the Context of Toxics. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/toxicwastes/cfis/justice-remedies/subm-access-justice-effective-sta-republic-marshall-islands-ssion.pdf

^[3] The Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to the United Nations. (N.d.). Country Facts. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.un.int/marshallislands/marshallislands/country-facts; See also: Pacific RISA. (N.d.). Republic of the Marshall Islands. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.pacificrisa.org/places/republic-of-the-marshall-islands/

^[4] UN News. (31 October 2024). UN expert calls for action as Marshall Islands face dual displacement crisis. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1156346

^[5] United Nations Human Rights Council. (2025). Membership of the Human Rights Council, 1 January – 31 December 2025 by regional groups. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/group2025

^[6] Blackley, C. (2025). South Pacific: How the Marshall Islands is reframing its past on the global stage. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.moderntreatise.com/asia-pacific/2026/2/3/south-pacific-how-the-marshall-islands-is-reframing-its-past-on-the-global-stage

^[7] Pacific Islands Forum. (2024). Remarks: RMI President Heine delivers statement to UNGA79. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://forumsec.org/publications/remarks-rmi-president-heine-delivers-statemen-unga79

^[8] Langrand, M. (2022). Marshall Islands takes US nuclear legacy to the Human Rights Council. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://genevasolutions.news/climate-environment/marshall-islands-takes-us-nuclear-legacy-to-the-human-rights-council

^[9] Leon, S. N. (2025). H.E. President Dr. Hilda C. Heina Addressed the 57^th Human Rights Council in Geneva, Urging Global Action on Climate Change and Nuclear Legacy. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://rmigov.com/?p=1427

^[10] The Human Rights Council. (2024). A/HRC/57/77: Addressing the challenges and barriers to the full realization and enjoyment of the human rights of the people of the Marshall Islands, stemming from the State’s nuclear legacy – Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5777-addressing-challenges-and-barriers-full-realization-and; See also. Mathieson, A. (2025). ‘We were told we were safe, but we were not’: Marshall Islands president lambasts UN. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://nit.com.au/07-10-2025/20591/we-were-told-we-were-safe-but-we-were-not-marshall-islands-president-lambasts-un

^[11] Leon, S. L. (2025). President Heine delivers national statement at the 80^th UN General Assembly. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://rmigov.com/?p=2008

^[12] Mathieson, A. (2025). ‘We were told we were safe, but we were not’: Marshall Islands president lambasts UN. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://nit.com.au/07-10-2025/20591/we-were-told-we-were-safe-but-we-were-not-marshall-islands-president-lambasts-un

^[13] The Republic of the Marshall Islands and National Nuclear Commission reply to call for inputs of the Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights. (2025). Access to Justice and Effective Remedies in the Context of Toxics. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/toxicwastes/cfis/justice-remedies/subm-access-justice-effective-sta-republic-marshall-islands-ssion.pdf; Further, the author attended the meeting and took notes.

^[14] International Court of Justice. (2025). Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change - latest developments. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/187

^[15] International Court of Justice. (23 July 2025). Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change, Advisory opinion. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://cdn.climatepolicyradar.org/navigator/XAA/2023/request-for-an-advisory-opinion-on-the-obligations-of-states-with-respect-to-climate-change_c552351dce95168dc30df84493f8722c.pdf

^[16] Pacific Islands Forum. (2025). Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting 54, 8-12 September 2025: Iumi Tugeda Duim – Integration in Action. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://piflm54.sig.gov.sb/index.php?start=16; Further, the author attended the meeting and took notes.

^[17] Human Rights Council – UN Web TV. (2025). Marshall Islands Review – 50^th Session of Periodic Review. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1d/k1dfzy1bkj; See: UPR-Info. (2025). Marshall Islands: Timeline for UPR engagement in the current cycle. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://upr-info.org/en/review/marshall-islands; See also: OHCHR. (2025). Marshall Islands’ human rights records to be examined by Universal Periodic Review. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.ohchr.org/en/media-advisories/2025/11/marshall-islandss-human-rights-record-be-examined-universal-periodic; See also: UN Human Rights Council. (2025). Universal Periodic Review – Marshall Islands: Fourth Cycle. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/mh-index

^[18] Human Rights Council: Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Fiftieth Session. (2025). A/HRC/WG.6/50/MHL/1: National report submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 5/1 and 16/21 – Marshall Islands. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/WG.6/50/MHL/1

^[19] United Nations High-Level Political Forum on sustainable Development. (2025). High-Level Political Forum 2026, 7-15 July 2026, New York. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://hlpf.un.org/2026/vnrs

^[20] Human Rights Council: Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review Fiftieth Session. (2025). A/HRC/WG.6/50/MHL/1: National report submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 5/1 and 16/21 – Marshall Islands. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/WG.6/50/MHL/1

^[21] Republic of Marshall Islands. (February 2025). The Republic of the Marshall Islands: Nationally Determined Contribution 2031-35. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/2025-02/Republic%20of%20the%20Marshall%20Islands%20NDC%203.0.pdf

^[22] Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme. (30 September 2025). Nature Restored: Seabirds and Native Flora Return after Invasive Rats Removed in the Marshall Islands. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://www.sprep.org/news/nature-restored-seabirds-and-native-flora-return-after-invasive-rats-removed-in-the-marshall-islands

^[23] Alberts, E. C. (11 June 2025). ‘Madness’: World Leaders Call for Deep-Sea Mining Moratorium at the UN Ocean Summit. Mongabay. Accessed 27 February 2026: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/madness-world-leaders-call-deep-sea-mining-moratorium-un-ocean-summit

Tags: Global governance