Canberra Raiders recruit dies aged 26 while holidaying with his family at Christmas
The NRL player Troy Dargan has died in a motorcycle accident while holidaying in the Cook Islands.
Dargan played two NRL games, both for South Sydney in 2020, and had joined Canberra on a two-year contract for the upcoming season.
Continue reading...Climate change and rising strategic competition among issues facing leaders at region’s most important political gathering
The leaders of Pacific nations will gather in the Cook Islands this week for the most closely watched meeting on the regional calendar. The Pacific Islands Forum, or Pif, is the main political decision making body for the region. This year discussions are likely to be dominated by climate change ahead of COP28, and will also address how to manage increasing geostrategic competition – including the rise of China.
On the eve of the summit, officials confirmed the leaders of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Zealand would not attend – weakening the prospects of progress on some issues.
Continue reading...The US has been racing to reopen embassies and deepen links with Pacific countries in wake of Solomon Islands security pact with China
The leaders of three Melanesian countries are missing the region’s most important annual political gathering, dealing a blow to attempts by Pacific island countries to project unity at a time of rising geopolitical rivalry.
Officials confirmed the prime ministers of Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea would not be travelling to the Cook Islands for the Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) meeting running from Monday to Friday.
Continue reading...Leaders of Pacific island states have been given star treatment in Washington but Chinese influence is the spectre at the feast
Joe Biden has offered more economic aid to Pacific islands at a White House meeting with leaders from the region aimed at bolstering US engagement in the face of a growing Chinese presence.
The president also announced formal US recognition of two new island nations, the Cook Islands and Niue, at the start of the Pacific Islands Forum, two days of Washington meetings with leaders from the group’s 18 members.
Continue reading...Agency to lead consortium in scheme targeting battery materials while conservationists say Australia on ‘wrong side of debate’
Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, has agreed to work with a controversial deep-sea mining project in the Pacific as a fourth island nation joins a call for a moratorium on the industry.
CSIRO will lead a consortium of scientists from Australia and New Zealand to help the Metals Company (TMC) develop an environmental management plan for its project, which is backed by the Nauru government.
Continue reading...Hundreds turn out for testing across the Pacific country after a traveller from New Zealand tested positive for the virus
One of the last remaining countries without Covid-19 - the small Pacific nation of Cook Islands - has reported its first case of the virus.
Prime minister Mark Brown said the first case arrived on an international flight from New Zealand on 10 February.
Continue reading...Despite the loss of income, some people say they enjoyed the peace of border closures while the environment had a chance to recover
For nearly a year and a half after the onset of the pandemic, the Cook Islands didn’t see a single tourist.
In early 2020 the south Pacific country was forced to close its borders to keep Covid-19 out. In doing so it shut the doors on an industry that contributes two-thirds of the remote island country’s GDP.
Continue reading...Two tankers flying the flag of the remote Pacific archipelago are alleged to have been involved in subterfuge shipping of Iranian oil
Two tankers flying the flag of the Cook Islands have been scrubbed from the islands’ shipping registry after allegations the vessels were sanctions-busting, transporting Iranian crude oil while concealing their movements.
US sanctions on Iran’s oil and gas sector have, somewhat improbably, caught up the tiny Cooks archipelago on the other side of the world.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...A global treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons becomes international law today. But the fight to rid the world of these dismal weapons continues.
In 1995, thousands of people marched peacefully hand-in-hand through the Tahitian capital of Pape’ete. The palm-lined streets were awash with songs of protest.
On a nearby shorefront, Cook Islanders had just arrived by traditional voyaging canoe: a vaka. They were there to deliver a message of solidarity with their island neighbours, en route to the nuclear test site of Moruroa.
Continue reading...A handful of countries – most of them islands, most of them remote – remain coronavirus-free, but life has not remained wholly unchanged
For all of its virulence, for all the breathtaking speed with which it spread seemingly everywhere around the globe, there are places still where Covid-19 has not reached, and might never.
Places without face masks or elbow-bumps, without QR codes or capacity limits, without lockdowns or social distancing. There are a handful of countries across the globe – many of them islands, most of them remote – that have managed to escape the pandemic. But while the virus hasn’t hit, the global shockwaves it has sent rippling around the world certainly have.
Continue reading...Residents will be able to travel between the two countries without isolating from early next year
New Zealand and the Cook Islands have agreed to a travel arrangement, the leaders of the two countries have announced, while Australians must wait a while longer to fly across the ditch.
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and her Cook Islands counterpart, Mark Brown, instructed officials to put in place measures to safely recommence two-way quarantine-free travel in the first quarter of 2021.
Continue reading...Optimism abounds as leaders from Fiji to Papua New Guinea welcome the new US president-elect
Joe Biden’s presidential ascension had not even been settled when Fiji’s forthright prime minister was already urging greater US action on climate change from the incoming American leader.
“Congratulations Joe Biden,” Frank Bainimarama tweeted on Saturday afternoon. “Together, we have a planet to save from a climate emergency and a global economy to build back better from Covid-19.”
Continue reading...Mark Brown’s multiple ministries prompt opposition to suggest PM lacks confidence in his cabinet
The Cook Islands’ new prime minister has allocated himself 17 portfolios in the country’s government.
Aside from the premiership, Mark Brown is the minister for foreign affairs, immigration, finance, energy and renewables, police, and telecommunications. He is also holds portfolio responsibilities for marine resources, seabed minerals and natural resources, superannuation, and the country’s outer islands. Brown is also the country’s attorney-general.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Environmentalist Jacqueline Evans says she was dismissed from the Marae Moana for urging caution on deep-sea mining
The public champion of the world’s largest marine reserve – the Cook Islands’ Marae Moana – has said she lost her job managing it because she supported a moratorium on seabed mining in the Pacific.
Six months ago, Jacqueline Evans won the Goldman Environmental prize – the world’s foremost environmental award – for her work establishing Marae Moana (meaning “sacred ocean”), which covers the Cook Islands’ entire exclusive economic zone of more than 1.9m sq km.
Continue reading...Fifty-four years after independence, the Cook Islands, is considering a name change. Named after Captain Cook, the Pacific islands, located between New Zealand and Hawaii, comprise 15 Polynesian islands, each with their own pre-colonial names and histories and complicated dynamics in the present. They are not the colonial fantasies of remote island adventures or tropical sexualities, and more than tourist destinations.
If you thought decolonisation in the Pacific was a mid-20th-century moment that ended with political independence, you would be wrong. Decolonisation is a continuing undoing of the legacies of colonialism. It involves re-examining names and categories, but it is not always about going back to the past to claim some authentic identity. Hence, Danny Mataroa, chair of the Cook Islands name change committee, has suggested a name that encompasses Christian faith (which arrived after colonialism) and Māori heritage (which predates colonialism).
Continue reading...