Chernobyl Forum

Establishment and composition

The Chernobyl Forum was founded on the initiative of the IAEA and held its founding meeting at IAEA headquarters in Vienna on 3–5 February 2003. It brought together eight UN organizations, the IAEA, the World Health Organization, the UN Development Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Environment Programme, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and the World Bank, together with the governments of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. It is distinct from the separate Chernobyl Shelter Fund (created in December 1997 and managed by the EBRD) and the Shelter Implementation Plan, which concern the sarcophagus and the New Safe Confinement rather than health assessment.

Work and reports

The Forum's central idea was to assess the medical, environmental and socio-economic consequences of Chernobyl twenty years after the catastrophe. Between 2003 and 2005 an international group of more than 100 scientists and specialists held a series of working meetings, and the Forum convened in Vienna on 6–7 September 2005. Its stated tasks included improving scientific analysis of the accident's long-term consequences, forming a single common view of the problem, identifying gaps in research and pointing to new lines of work, and supporting scientifically justified remediation programmes, including joint programmes of the participating organizations.

The Forum released its comprehensive assessment report, Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts, on 5 September 2005. A revised edition followed in March 2006 together with its Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Findings and dispute

The WHO press release of 5 September 2005 confirmed the estimate that a total of up to 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure. According to the report, 28 emergency workers died of acute radiation syndrome and 15 patients died of thyroid cancer, and among the roughly 600,000 cleanup workers who received the greatest exposures, cancer deaths caused by the accident might eventually total up to 4,000. As of mid-2005 fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation, almost all highly exposed rescue workers. The Forum also treated mental-health damage rather than radiation as the largest public-health problem of the accident, and argued that exaggerated fear of radiation drove harmful behaviour.

The estimate was contested from the moment of publication. Critics argued that the figure of 4,000 underreported deaths by more than 50 percent relative to the study the Forum cited, which determined 9,000, and that in the course of the debate the UN issued a statement correcting the number. Estimates varied widely with the political and economic interests of the organizations involved: some studies concluded that exposure in the general population was too low to produce a significant rise in mortality, a toll of the 30 liquidators afflicted by acute radiation syndrome, while others predicted hundreds of thousands of victims. The 2000 UNSCEAR report stated that as long as individual dosimetry is not performed, no reliable quantitative estimates can be made.

Related entries

The Forum was established to assess the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl accident of 26 April 1986; the course of the accident and its cleanup are treated in the entry The Chernobyl Disaster.