PINA

Allegations of possible payments to help secure votes. Claims of abuse of agency funds by top diplomats. A possible job offer to entice a candidate to withdraw from a race. These are not the shenanigans of a corrupt election in an unstable country. Rather, they are efforts in the seemingly genteel parlors of a United Nations-affiliated agency, meant to sway...

With reporting by Lice Movono/Suva, Fiji, and Leslie Dickstein/New York  Whenever the growing pile of plastic waste in front of her door takes up too much space, Asinate Lewabeka has a simple solution. She sets it on fire. She prefers to do so at dawn when the air is still so that the smoke rises in a black column....

Team Fiji swimmers, David Young and Anahira McCutcheon are among the athletes who have confirmed their spots to compete at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France this month. Team Fiji Chef de Mission, Sale Sorovaki confirmed that Young and McCutcheon will be the only athletes competing in swimming for Fiji. This was after-Young and McCutcheon achieved the highest World Aquatics...

New Zealand and Nauru are deepening their relationship, including on economic resilience and education, deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Nauru have a warm, long-standing relationship, and we are strengthening our engagement through enhanced political, security, and development cooperation,” Peters said. “The good functioning of Nauru’s education system is vital to the country’s future, so we are pleased...

Journalism is the oxygen of democracy and Fiji now has true democracy as the people are able to share freely and their positions no longer hidden under ambiguity. This was highlighted by the Fiji deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Communications, Manoa Kamikamica while officiating the 2024 Pacific Media Conference in Suva today. “We pride ourselves on a government that tries...

The Government of Vanuatu, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation and External Trade (MoFAICET), launched its first documented Foreign Policy Wednesday. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister responsible for Foreign Affairs, Matai Seremaiah, said this Foreign Policy aims to promote and develop specific areas, including promoting sovereignty and protecting national boundaries. “We are committed to safeguarding Vanuatu’s sovereignty and territorial...

The Albanese government will strike a new funding deal with Papua New Guinea to support asylum seekers after the country threatened to send them back to Australia unless a fresh agreement was signed. In December 2021 the Morrison government struck a secret deal for about 75 refugees and asylum seekers to stay in Port Moresby after the regional processing centre...

Forum Secretary General, Baron Waqa Wednesday reiterated the importance of ocean governance at the Regional Ocean Governance and BBNJ Workshop in Suva. “Ocean governance is a vast area of importance for decision makers, policy makers, and experts,” he said. Waqa highlighted ongoing efforts and stressed the value of these workshops. “The Secretariat, with the help of CROP and stakeholders, has been working...

New Zealand is unlikely to resettle its full quota of refugees from Nauru under its 2022 agreement with Australia, and faces choices on the future of the pact. A deal struck by previous governments on both sides of the Tasman agreed New Zealand would take 450 refugees from the detention centre between 2022-2025. In the first two years of the pact,...

Fiji's Attorney-General Graham Leung has called on the Acting Director of Public Prosecutions John Rabuku to do the honourable thing and resign. In a statement, Leung said the office is bigger than the individual. “It is regretted that the Acting Director of Public Prosecutions (Rabuku) has chosen to remain in office following the opinion of the Supreme Court,” Leung said. Meanwhile, the...