Category Archives: Vanuatu

Future of Pacific Islands Forum in doubt as north-south rift emerges

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Exclusive: Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and Nauru question whether to remain members amid bullying claims

Leaders of Micronesian countries are contemplating abandoning the Pacific Islands Forum altogether, after a fractious vote for a new secretary general sidelined the north Pacific countries, who say they are bullied by larger nations, and left with “crumbs”.

The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) is the Pacific region’s most important political body and a powerful voice for the Pacific on the global stage, but the election of former Cook Islands prime minister Henry Puna as secretary general has exposed a deep fracture between north and south Pacific nations.

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Chinese vessels detained by Vanuatu, accused of fishing illegally

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Crew on two vessels face further investigation in Pacific nation, a month after similar incident in Palau

Two Chinese fishing vessels have been detained by Vanuatu authorities amid allegations they were fishing illegally in the Pacific nation’s territorial waters.

This is the first time that Chinese vessels have been accused of illegal fishing activities in Vanuatu’s territory, but their confinement comes just a month after Palau detained a Chinese-flagged vessel reportedly illegally harvesting sea cucumber, or beche-de-mer, in the western Pacific state’s territorial waters.

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‘A memory bobbing around the ocean’: message in a bottle found after two years

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Conservationist on a remote Papua New Guinean island finds message from American girl thrown overboard more than 2,500km away

This bottle was different. Glass, with its lid sealed tight, it contained a handful of rice grains and a few seashells. And a note.

In November, on the remote Conflict Islands of Papua New Guinea, conservation ranger Steven Amos was cleaning the beachfront on Panasesa island when he stumbled across something that was not thoughtlessly thrown away, but consciously sent as a message to an unknown recipient, somewhere in the world.

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Vanuatu faces economic hurdles as natural disaster recovery continues – video

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Vanuatu is ranked by the World Bank as the world’s most at-risk nation to natural disasters. Over the last five years, the South Pacific nation has endured two major volcanic events and two category 5 cyclones including Cyclone Harold in April 2020. While it has escaped infection from the Covid-19 pandemic, the loss of tourism has left a devastating impact on the local economy

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‘This song is the struggle’: Vanuatu’s treehouse troubadour on love, loss and language

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Singer-songwriter Tio Massing writes songs from a sprawling banyan tree, and says ‘I have to do something for this earth, and the next generation’

Vanuatu singer-songwriter Tio Bang Massing writes from a place that few still remember.

He tries to live there too, with an almost Buddha-like simplicity, in a makeshift home tucked among the roots of a sprawling banyan tree.

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Calls for a Covid ‘kava bubble’ as supply from Pacific to Australia dries up

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With little of the homemade Pacific brew available in Australia, prices have skyrocketed, and there’s been a spike in seizures at the border

The questions are asked quietly, but urgently: “Kava, do you have any? Do you know where to get any? Have you heard what they are paying for it in Sydney?”

When Pasifika meet in Australia, it is often kava that dominates: now, it is the absence of it.

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Protests flare in Papua as students demand independence referendum

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Police fire shots as crowds of demonstrators demand a vote on secession from Indonesia

Unrest has flared in the restive Indonesian region of Papua with police firing shots during a protest by hundreds of university students in the provincial capital, Jayapura.

The group was demonstrating against plans to extend a special autonomy law that protestors say has not done enough to help people in one of the country’s poorest regions.

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Surge in passport sales delivers Vanuatu a record budget surplus

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Economy devastated by Covid shutdowns and a destructive cyclone, but citizenships-for-sale are keeping the country afloat

Surging demand for Vanuatu passports has driven an unexpected record surplus, funding Covid-19 bailout packages and cyclone recovery.

With nearly every other sector of its fragile economy reeling from the twin crises of pandemic lockdowns and April’s category five Cyclone Harold, Vanuatu nonetheless managed to turn a 3.8bn Vanuatu Vatu (US$33.3m) surplus in the first half of 2020.

Its controversial citizenship-for-sale programmes account for nearly all of that.

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Pacific states face instability, hunger and slow road to Covid recovery: Dame Meg Taylor

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While the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic has so far spared the Pacific, its economies are in free-fall, the region’s chief diplomat warns

Beyond the health and economic crises of Covid-19, the global pandemic has the potential to cause political instability and undermine state security across the Pacific, the region’s chief diplomat has warned.

Dame Meg Taylor, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, said the region’s economies were struggling with the virus-induced shocks, and a prolonged crisis could worsen existing problems of hunger, poor healthcare, and state fragility.

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Without seasonal workers, Australia may face a hungry summer | Michael Rose

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With not enough workers to pick the upcoming harvest, Australia faces potential food shortages, and its farmers face economic devastation

As Victoria’s Covid-19 outbreak threatens to spiral out of control and beyond its borders, Australia faces another pandemic-related crisis.

We are sailing into a food shortage and few are talking about it. This needs to change.

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Coronavirus in the Pacific: weekly briefing

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Covid-19-related developments throughout the Pacific Islands

The total number of Covid-19 cases across the Pacific stands at 314, with new cases reported this week in New Caledonia, Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.

New Zealand is under increasing pressure, both internally and from across the region, to consider Pacific countries as part of its proposed travel ‘bubble’, alongside, or even in place of, Australia. The foreign minister, Winston Peters, initially rejected including Pacific island nations, but later backtracked.

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The Vanuatu island in the eye of the storm

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Pentecost Island, devastated by Cyclone Harold in April, has been left a silent shadow of its former self. But its people endure

Touching down on the island of Pentecost in Vanuatu, it takes hours to notice the silence. After a while it hits you: there’s no birdsong, no insects buzzing and chittering. There is no wind in the trees.

You don’t register the silence at first because your eyes are overwhelmed with the magnitude of the destruction. The eye of category 5 Cyclone Harold passed directly over the central and southern half of this remote and mountainous island on April 5.

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‘It’s all gone’: Cyclone Harold cuts a deadly path through Vanuatu

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The northern islands of the Pacific nation were hit by a category-5 cyclone on Monday, flattening buildings, cutting power and stripping trees

The once-lush forest cover of the island of Malo has been completely denuded. Nearly every tree lost major limbs. Many were snapped at the trunk. Even cyclone-adapted coconut trees were strewn about like matchsticks. Schools and homes were destroyed.

On Monday, the tiny Pacific island country of Vanuatu was rocked by Cyclone Harold, the second category-5 storm to hit the nation in five years. The cyclone, which formed off Solomon Islands and led to the deaths of 27 people who were swept off a ferry in rough seas, went on to flatten buildings and cause severe flooding in Fiji and Tonga. But it passed through the north of Vanuatu when it was at its strongest.

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Cyclone Harold: Aerial footage shows destruction across Vanuatu – video

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Tropical Cyclone Harold lashed the South Pacific island of Vanuatu , ripping off roofs and downing telecommunications, before moving towards Fiji and Tonga. The powerful cyclone made landfall on Monday in Sana province, an island north of Vanuatu's capital Port Vila, with winds as high as 235 kilometres an hour. Aerial videos showed buildings with missing roofs, with some flattened to the ground from the impact of the cyclone. The weather system weaken slightly as it moved towards Fiji but still brought high winds and flooding before moving towards Tonga


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‘If it comes, it will be a disaster’: life in one of the only countries without coronavirus

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The Pacific nation of Vanuatu is one of the few places that is coronavirus-free, but efforts to stop its arrival have been hampered by a category five cyclone

On Sunday morning, 62 guests prepared to check out of an idyllic resort, surrounded by palm trees and overlooking a lagoon, in Vanuatu’s capital of Port Vila.

But instead of taxis waiting to take them to the airport, familiar faces were anxiously waiting to take their loved ones back home.

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Communications down after category 5 Cyclone Harold hits Vanuatu

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Pacific nation lashed by heavy rain, flash flooding and ‘phenomenal seas’

A category five cyclone has made landfall on the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, causing damage across large parts of the country, as it tries to prepare for the coronavirus outbreak.

Cyclone Harold made landfall on the north and west of the country on Monday, after spending Sunday sitting off the country’s west coast, gathering strength.

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Coronavirus fears and controversial passport sales: Vanuatu’s election explained

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A country with fractured and shifting political alliances, Vanuatu heads to the polls at a crucial moment in its history

In the coffee shops and kava bars of Vanuatu’s capital of Port Vila, there are two subjects that dominate conversation: Covid-19 and this week’s general elections, which will be held on Thursday.

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Advice from a country with regular shortages: stop hoarding toilet paper, get ready for boredom | Dan McGarry

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In Vanuatu, where cyclones regularly interrupt trade, we are watching the west’s collective panic with bemusement

I’ve lived in the south Pacific island nation of Vanuatu for 16 years. Tropical weather regularly interrupts trade. Even when they’re hundreds of kilometres away, cyclones wreak havoc on shipping. Isolation and deprivation define our lives. We know better than most how to cope.

So imagine our bemusement when we see ranks of empty shelves in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, denuded by people who pretty clearly have never dealt with a shortage before.

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‘Plain cruel’: Vanuatu stops newspaper chief boarding plane home after China stories

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Dan McGarry of the Daily Post told at Brisbane airport the Vanuatu immigration service had barred him from flying back to the island country

The media director of a Vanuatu newspaper whose visa renewal was refused this month has been barred from flying home to Vanuatu from Brisbane with his partner.

Dan McGarry, who has lived in Vanuatu for 16 years, applied to have his work permit renewed earlier this year but it was rejected. McGarry believes his visa was refused due to articles he had published about China’s influence in Vanuatu.

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Vanuatu has cancelled my work permit; it’s a dark day for media freedom | Dan McGarry

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Vanuatu’s Daily Post has always held the government to account and will continue to do so, with or without me as editor

On Thursday, the Vanuatu government issued instructions that after 16 years living here and, despite having a Ni Vanuatu spouse and children, I will have to leave the country.

As the media director and publisher of Vanuatu’s only daily newspaper, a newspaper that has repeatedly held the government uncomfortably to account, I believe the government refused my application to renew my work visa to silence me and warn other journalists in the country not to speak out.

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