France is getting itself in hot water because of its seventeen nuclear detonations in the Algerian Sahara.

More than scientific experiments or Cold War posturing, France’s nuclear tests in Algeria were a form of colonial risk externalization: the deliberate transfer of existential danger onto a colonized land and its people. The colonial administration exported the catastrophic potential of its nuclear program far from its own population, offloading the risks of fallout and long-term contamination onto a colony deemed expendable.

The controversy is now whether French colonial records are still meant to be a secret. The reality is that Algeria can and should force a cleanup forward regardless of what Paris declassifies or admits in the open.

Here are the four steps to a better world.

1. Ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Algeria signed in 2017 and has yet to deposit ratification. Entry as a State Party places Reggane and In Ekker under Article 6, which obliges the affected state to remediate and entitles it to technical, material and financial assistance from every other party in a position to provide it. The Meeting of States Parties then becomes a standing forum where French failure is formally recorded year after year. Article 6(3) preserves every claim Algeria holds against France under general international law.
2. Publish Algeria’s own baseline. The IAEA assessment of 2005 was released as preliminary, built on a single 1999 mission and on summaries France chose to supply. Algeria created a national agency for rehabilitation of the sites in 2021. That agency can commission an independent survey, publish its own coordinates and dose maps, and define in writing what remains unknown, despite France. A documented gap generates a demand France would need to answer. An undocumented one is what France toys with.
3. Ask Paris for the Polynesia order. Macron ordered declassification of French nuclear archives in 2021 after the Toxique investigation. The same applies to the Sahara. Nine French deputies have already asked the Élysée to publish the burial maps. Algeria can put a dated request through the joint working group formed in 2008 and file the French answer, or their cynical refusal, as the public record.
4. Invite the IAEA back with a mandate. The 2005 report recommended further study. A second mission, requested by Algeria as an IAEA member state and funded under Article 7, produces a current radiological map under international signature. French experts can join it or decline it. Either outcome will move the argument a step forward towards France being forced to account for their harms.

Each of these works without Paris being expected to end colonialism, as it should have decades ago. What time is it? Each step makes the next document that France fails to produce a matter of formal records. And Algeria can press forward with cleanup in a manner that France will have to answer for eventually.