PINA

Any human rights issues in West Papua must not be overshadowed by the fact that the country remains under the sovereignty of Indonesia. These were the sentiments expressed by Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and his Papua New Guinea counterpart James Marape at a news conference in Suva Tuesday. “West Papua has been an issue that has resurfaced many times in the...

Pacific delegates have joined the rest of the international community at what is hoped to be the finale in the negotiations of the marine biological diversity treaty at the UN Headquarters in New York, USA. Forum Secretary General and Pacific Ocean Commissioner Henry Puna is pleading with all the nations of the world to bring the high seas treaty canoe...

By Caleb Jarvis, Trade and Investment Commissioner, PTI Australia From media to development strategies, industry transformations to education, we are seeing unequivocally that the future is digital. In this instance, the Pacific Islands is no exception. In recent years the oceanic stage has been set for digital prosperity. Connectivity and technology gains have been rolled-out and adopted at accelerated rates,...

The UN Human Rights Office has launched Pacific Climate Tales – an animated video series where migrant workers from the Pacific region share their personal stories about climate change, leaving home and how it affects their human rights. As part of our yearlong count-down to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ 75 anniversary on December 10 and the #StandUp4Migrants campaign,...

Over the years, Claire Anterea has waved goodbye to numerous friends and family members as they left the Pacific island nation of Kiribati for jobs in regional powerhouse Australia. She had never considered joining them--until now. Australia will introduce a permanent residency option for Pacific islanders this year and has also expanded its short-term labor program--part of the country’s wider efforts...

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says Fiji will in the near-future appoint a non-resident High Commissioner to begin negotiations on the reopening of Fiji’s mission in Port Moresby. In a joint press conference with his Papua New Guinea counterpart, James Marape, Rabuka said Fiji had to close the High Commission in PNG due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rabuka said this can only...

Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Henry Puna has urged world leaders attending the resumed fifth-session of the Intergovernmental Conference on the Biological Diversity Beyond National Jurisdictions (BBNJ IGC-5) in New York to hold faith for a global protected ocean. Noting the negotiation process for this global ocean treaty under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has...

Regional leaders will meet this week at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Special Leaders Retreat in Fiji. “We have come through a period of some fracture,” incoming PIF Chair Mark Brown, who is prime minister of Cook islands, said. “Re-establishing those ties, re-establishing relationships, that’s going to be an important part of the side events of this meeting.” A number of issues...

Actor and activist Jane Fonda on Monday warned that humanity is “losing the ocean,” as two weeks of negotiations begin at the United Nations on a treaty to protect the high seas. “The ocean provides us with 50 percent of our oxygen, and it feeds billions of people -- and it´s dying,” the 85-year-old American icon said in an interview. She...

By Rory Medcalf Like empires past, Xi Jinping’s China seeks three grand prizes in the Pacific: wealth, control and presence. Australia and other Pacific nations have recognised the nature and scope of this neocolonial ambition and the risk it brings; responses have veered from complacency to overreaction, fatalism to alarm. The events of 2022 – especially the controversy over China’s security...