Former Republic of the Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum and his legal team have been nominated for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, Pacific Daily News reports.

Geneva-based International Peace Bureau nominated de Brum’s team Jan. 26 for filing lawsuits against nuclear-armed nations “for failing to comply with their obligations under international law to pursue negotiations for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons.”

During his term as foreign minister, which ended in the November elections, de Brum “also called attention to climate change as a global security risk issue before the United Nations,” says the Guam paper.

De Brum and other Micronesians were in Paris late last year for the UN meeting on climate change and are credited with calling attention to the plight of low-lying islands to rising sea levels.

More about de Brum:

De Brum grew up on the island of Likiep during the 12-year period, through 1958, when the United States conducted 67 atomic and thermonuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands. As a 9-year-old, De Brum witnessed the “Bravo” test at Bikini Atoll, the largest-ever U.S. nuclear test that produced an explosion 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, according to a UOG news release.

Read more about Micronesia, global warming and the nuclear history.