Category Archives: Marshall Islands

Mapped: the vast network of security deals spanning the Pacific, and what it means

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Guardian analysis shows web of agreements between Pacific countries and Australia, US and China, as experts raise concerns over rising militarisation

As competition for influence in the Pacific region intensifies, analysis by the Guardian has mapped a vast network of security, policing and defence agreements between the island countries and foreign partners – leading to concerns about militarisation of the region.

The Guardian examined agreements and partnerships covering security, defence and policing with the 10 largest Pacific countries by population. Australia remains the dominant partner in the region – accounting for more than half the deals identified – followed by New Zealand, the US and China.

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Congress ‘gradually destroying’ US relations with Pacific ally, Marshall Islands president warns

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Hilda Heine says US funding delays damage relationship with the Pacific nation as lawmakers say hold-up delivers a ‘gift’ to China

Hilda Heine, the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, has warned relations with the US are “gradually being destroyed by party politics” as Congress delays approval of crucial funding for the Pacific nation.

US lawmakers have not yet passed funding packages agreed in 2023 with the Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), in a move some argue is opening the door to China to build its influence in the Pacific region.

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Pacific Island leaders warn US failure to pass funding bill opens door to China

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The Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau say Congress needs to approve fresh support announced by Joe Biden

Pacific leaders have warned the US government that a delay in approving funding packages for the region threatens to play into the hands of Beijing, which is seeking to shift allegiances in the Pacific and draw away as many of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies as possible.

In 2023 the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Marshall Islands (RMI) and Palau agreed to renew 20-year funding programs with the United States. The agreements, known as Compacts of Free Association (COFA), see Washington provide economic assistance to the Pacific nations in return for exclusive military access to large and strategic areas of the Pacific.

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Marshall Islands calls for US to pay more compensation over nuclear tests

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Pacific nation plagued by environmental effects of 67 bomb tests between 1946 and 1958, including Castle Bravo detonation in 1954

The foreign minister of the Marshall Islands has called for more US compensation over the legacy of massive US nuclear testing to enable the renewal of a strategic agreement governing bilateral relations.

Marshall Islanders are still plagued by health and environmental effects of 67 nuclear bomb tests from 1946 to 1958, which included Castle Bravo at Bikini Atoll in 1954 – the largest US bomb ever detonated.

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Trump-era officials under fire as nuclear fund for Bikini islanders is squandered

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Former staff have criticized the interior department for ignoring the risk of fraud after the Trump administration ceased scrutiny of a $59m fund for nuclear survivors, which is now depleted

Former staff have lashed the US Department of the Interior for failing to predict that a 2017 decision to lift oversight from a $59m trust fund for Pacific Islanders displaced by American nuclear testing would lead to the fund’s exhaustion through mismanagement and alleged fraud.

Tom Bussanich, who in 2017 was a senior official in the department’s Office of Insular Affairs, said that he “would have bet money that there would have been issues with the trust fund and that the money would have been wasted”. Allen Stayman, a former director of the Office of Insular Affairs, dismissed the office as “the agency of acquiescence”.

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Ex-president demands inquiry into Marshall Islands ‘mini-state plot’

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Hilda Heine calls for investigation into Chinese couple’s alleged efforts to bribe officials to help set up tax haven

A former president of the Marshall Islands has called for an investigation into an alleged plot by a Chinese couple to establish a mini-state inside its borders and set it up as a lucrative tax-break haven.

The pair were charged by US prosecutors with bribery and money-laundering offences over a “multi-year scheme” that included establishing a non-governmental organisation, allegedly bribing five Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) officials and attempting to bribe a sixth. One of the five was allegedly given cash to bribe others into supporting the carving out of a Hong Kong-style territory.

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Marshall Islands, haven from Covid for two years, gets 3,000 cases in space of weeks

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Pacific country had recorded no community transmission of the virus until last week, and healthcare is struggling to cope

After dodging the Covid-19 pandemic for two years, the Marshall Islands is grappling to control the spread of infections, which have tripled since the first community transmissions were detected a week ago.

The number of positive cases in the north Pacific nation, which has a population of about 60,000 people, has skyrocketed to more than 3,000 cases with four Covid-linked deaths and seven hospital admissions.

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Power struggle with China and regional rift in focus as Anthony Albanese heads to Pacific Islands forum

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Absence of Kiribati from the meeting is ‘really devastating’ to the body’s long-term strategy, security expert says

When Anthony Albanese touches down in Suva on Wednesday to attend his first Pacific Islands Forum, he will be walking in to a regional meeting that is putting on a brave face.

While it had been thought that the forum would be focused on the growing influence of China and as an opportunity for Australia to showcase its new climate credentials, Albanese will arrive to a group wrestling with other problems.

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Global shipping is a big emitter, the industry must commit to drastic action before it is too late

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Around 80% of global trade is transported across oceans on cargo vessels powered by fossil fuels, Pacific nations are calling for decisive global action

  • Casten Ned Nemra is minister of foreign affairs of the Marshall Islands

Many communities around the world have recently been confronted with the dangerous impacts of climate change and as world leaders prepare to meet in Glasgow for the COP26 summit, are examining what action needs to be taken.

But one of the world’s major global greenhouse gas emitters has long escaped global attention.

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Vanuatu coronavirus vaccine rollout to take until end of 2023

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The majority of the Pacific nation’s population won’t be immunised for another two years, government planning documents show

Despite a tourism-dependent economy devastated by coronavirus shutdowns, Vanuatu’s Covid-19 vaccination programme will not inoculate most of its population until the end of 2023.

According to the ministry of health’s national deployment and vaccination plan, the first shots will be administered in April this year, but only the most vulnerable 20% of the population will get a jab in the first phase.

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Pacific Islands Forum in crisis as one-third of member nations quit

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Micronesian sub-grouping walks out over selection of new secretary-general

The Pacific Islands Forum – the Pacific’s most influential regional body – is in disarray after nearly one-third of its member countries quit en masse.

The countries of the Micronesian sub-grouping – Palau, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, and Nauru – have all abandoned the forum over the selection of the new secretary-general for the forum, following the election of Polynesia’s candidate in defiance of a long-standing convention that dictated it was the Micronesia’s turn to provide the forum’s leader.

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Zoomed to fail? Cracks appear in Pacific Islands Forum as Covid pulls nations apart

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Pacific diplomacy hinges on in-person discussion but web-only meetings have fed a growing dispute over the forum’s leadership and purpose

In the Pacific, it is all about the talanoa: the conversation and the consensus.

For the 50 years of the Pacific Islands Forum (beginning life as the South Pacific Forum), meetings have always happened in person, and it is the power of the leaders being together that has given the forum its rare ability to find common ground.

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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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The baby-selling scheme: poor pregnant Marshall Islands women lured to the US

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Dozens of women from the Pacific island victims of brazen trafficking ring that operated for years

Rolson Price still scans Facebook for her picture. He’s seen her occasionally, at the periphery of someone else’s photo, instantly recognisable.

But he’s never met her, and concedes he never will.

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Ghost boat laden with cocaine washes up in the Marshall Islands

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Abandoned vessel containing 649kg of drug washes up on a remote Pacific atoll after potentially years at sea

Police in the Marshall Islands have found the Pacific nation’s largest-ever haul of cocaine in an abandoned boat that washed up on a remote atoll after drifting on the high seas, potentially for years.

Attorney general Richard Hickson said the 5.5 metre (18ft) fibreglass vessel was found at Ailuk atoll last week with 649 kg (1,430lb ) of cocaine hidden in a compartment beneath the deck.

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Now that nuclear weapons are illegal, the Pacific demands truth on decades of testing | Dimity Hawkins

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With a 50th nation ratifying it, the treaty outlawing nuclear weapons for all countries will come into force in 90 days

Nuclear weapons will soon be illegal. Just over 75 years since their devastation was first unleashed on the world, the global community has rallied to bring into force a ban through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Late on Saturday night in New York, the 50th country – the central American nation of Honduras – ratified the treaty.

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My country may be swept away by the climate crisis if the rest of the world fails to uphold its promises | President David Kabua

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Now is a time for courage. It will take sacrifices from everyone for us all to survive, the president of the Marshall Islands writes

My country joined the United Nations nearly 30 years ago, in September 1991. But unless my fellow member states take action, we may also be forced from it: the first country to see our land swept away by climate change.

As the UN general assembly meets in New York, celebrating the 75th anniversary of its formation, we must ask: how many of the 193 nations that it brings together will survive to reach its centenary?

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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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‘Save us, save the world’: Pacific climate warriors taking the fight to the UN

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Frank Bainimarama, Enele Sopoaga and Hilda Heine hope their urgent demands for action will save their island nations from the rising waves

It is the final night of the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu and the Fijian prime minister is explaining how to drink kava.

“You clap first,” says Frank Bainimarama, as the smooth wooden bowl is passed around the circle. “Then you have to gulp in one go; then you clap again – one, two, three.”

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