Category Archives: Pacific islands

PNG residents evicted a decade ago for casino development face violence and poverty: report

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Former residents of the Paga Hill settlement in Port Moresby say their displacement has led to a range of problems

Many former residents of a settlement in Papua New Guinea who claim they were forcibly evicted nearly a decade ago say they are living without access to sanitation, electricity and water and some have faced homelessness, violence and community tension as a result of the move, according to a new report.

In 2012 the Paga Hill Development Company (PHDC), a PNG registered company with significant ties to Australia, announced its plan to create the Paga Hill Estate, which would include a resort, casino, and an aquarium. In 2012 police, backed by bulldozers, began moving into the settlement of Paga Hill in Port Moresby, to clear the area.

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‘We are sinking’: Tuvalu minister gives Cop26 speech standing knee deep in seawater – video

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Tuvalu's foreign minister has given a speech to the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow standing knee-deep in seawater to show how his low-lying Pacific island nation is on the frontline of the climate crisis. The video of Simon Kofe standing in a suit and tie at a lectern set up in the sea delivering his speech draws attention to Tuvalu's struggle against rising sea levels. 

'We will not stand idly by as the water rises around us. We are not just talking in Tuvalu, we are mobilising collective action at home, in our region, and on the international stage to secure our future,'  Kofe said

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Australia’s commitment to coal is directly responsible for climate crisis in the Pacific | Anote Tong

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Constant change in the climate policies of Australia and New Zealand has been a huge disappointment to Pacific island nations

When I came into office as president of Kiribati in 2003, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had released its third assessment report and, like my predecessors, I believed the report’s projected rise in sea levels posed a real threat to the survival for those of us on the frontline. Accordingly, in my first address at the UN General Assembly in 2004 I drew attention to the dangers posed by climate change, especially to small island nations like Kiribati and other Pacific island countries.

The fact that no other leader made any reference to it in their statement worried me and I wondered whether I might be making a fool of myself, especially when the focus of international attention at the time was on more real and present threats like terrorism. Thankfully by the next assembly, in 2005, other Pacific island leaders had joined the call for action. This has gathered great momentum in the years since.

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Cost of Australia holding each refugee on Nauru balloons to $4.3m a year

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Exclusive: Taxpayer cost of offshore processing regime revealed as government remains silent on where $400m went

The cost to Australian taxpayers to hold a single refugee on Nauru has escalated tenfold to more than $350,000 every month – or $4.3m a year – as the government refuses to reveal where nearly $400m spent on offshore processing on the island has gone.

Australia currently pays about $40m a month to run its offshore processing regime on Nauru, an amount almost identical to 2016 when there were nearly 10 times as many people held on the island.

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‘One of the greatest injustices’: Pacific islands on the frontline of the climate crisis – video

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Pacific countries are among those most at risk amid the climate crisis. Islands are becoming more difficult to inhabit and people across the region face an impossible decision: to stay in a dangerous place, or leave their homes and culture behind. Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson talks about the cost of global heating and what Pacific leaders are asking for at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

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In Samoa we are born into land, climate change threatens to take it away from us

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Everyone in the Pacific has stories of times the climate crisis hit our lives. For me, it is the birth of my daughter between cyclones

My daughter was born between cyclones.

It was January 2013, and as we drove to the hospital, we passed the wreckage left by Cyclone Evan which had devastated my home island weeks earlier. Evan had been the worst tropical cyclone to hit Samoa in over two decades. There were huge holes in the road. Debris where homes once stood.

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‘We’re ready’: Fiji prepares to welcome tourists almost two years after closing borders

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Fully vaccinated travellers from select countries including New Zealand and Australia will be able to visit from November

Fiji says it is already experiencing a boom in demand after announcing this week that it would open up quarantine-free travel to visitors from select countries, almost two years after closing its borders due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Our website data is well up – we are seeing a real lift in interest. It is exciting, and we want to encourage people to come and spend Christmas and new year in Fiji,” Tourism Fiji chief executive Brent Hill said.

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‘It was a nice break from everything’: two men rescued after 29 days lost at sea

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Surviving on oranges they’d packed, coconuts from the sea and rainwater they collected, they floated about 400km in the Solomon Sea before being rescued

Two men from Solomon Islands who spent 29 days lost at sea after their GPS tracker stopped working have been rescued off the coast of Papua New Guinea – 400 kilometres away from where their journey began.

Livae Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni set out from Mono Island, in Western province, Solomon Islands, on the morning of the 3 September in a small, single 60 horsepower motorboat.

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‘Crisis unfolding’ as Papua New Guinea hospitals hit by worst Covid wave yet

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Health authorities have been forced to turn a stadium into a makeshift hospital while elsewhere essential services are closing

Hospitals in Papua New Guinea are being pushed to the brink and morgues are overflowing, as the country suffers what health authorities say is the worst surge in Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began.

The country’s health care system has long been plagued by shortages of drugs, funding, an ailing infrastructure and a severe lack of health workers.

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PNG must act now to stop the epidemic of violence against women and girls | Stephanie McLennan

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Last year 15,444 cases of domestic violence were reported but only 250 people were prosecuted and 100 convicted. Victims deserve better

A woman is beaten every 30 seconds in Papua New Guinea, and more than 1.5 million people experience gender-based violence in the country each year.

On 3 September in Mt Hagen, one of the country’s largest cities, three men were released from prison after being accused of murdering a 31-year-old woman, Imelda Tupi Tiamanda. One of the men was her husband.

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‘The sharks are hiding’: locals claim deep-sea mining off Papua New Guinea has stirred up trouble

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‘Shark calling’, an ancient custom of hunters singing to sharks then catching them by hand, is under threat and locals blame deep-sea disturbances

More in this series
• Race to the bottom: the disastrous, blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea
• ‘False choice’ – is deep sea mining required for an electric vehicle revolution?
• Covid tests and superbug killers: how the deep sea is key to fighting pandemics

To catch a shark in the waters off Papua New Guinea, first the men sing.

They sing the names of their ancestors and their respects to the shark. They shake a coconut rattle into the sea, luring the animals from the deep, and then catch them by hand.

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How are Australia’s neighbours faring in the Covid pandemic?

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Vaccination rates are rising in much of south-east Asia and the Pacific after recent outbreaks, but some of the largest countries are falling behind

While Australians have focused on the Covid waves in Sydney and Melbourne, many of Australia’s neighbours have recently experienced their largest outbreaks so far. This includes Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu and even Singapore.

Singapore surpassed Australia’s vaccination target weeks ago, but was now seeing more than a thousand cases a day. Fiji recently had one of the highest rates of Covid cases per capita – peaking at 1,850 cases in the middle of July. But the nation of 889,000 was now regularly administering more than 10,000 new vaccinations a day.

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Guam’s vaccination success story turns grim with Covid surge

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Once the great vaccination success story, the island is under strain amid a new wave of infections, but experts say cases would be far higher without vaccine coverage

Outside Guam Memorial hospital, blue medical tents have sprung up to accomodate an overflow of Covid patients.

The sight is bewildering for Guam residents. The island ran an incredibly successful vaccination campaign, with almost 90% of eligible people having received two doses, and even began offering jabs to tourists in an “Air VnV” – vacation and vaccination – scheme.

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Pacific nations face ‘lost decade’ due to economic cost of Covid

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Pacific Islands face greatest economic contraction in four decades, according to a new report from the Lowy Institute

Countries in the Pacific risk a “lost decade” following the Covid pandemic, with the region facing its greatest economic contraction in four decades, according to a new report into foreign aid.

The latest Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map, which sets out aid spending and donations to the Pacific Islands region, shows US$2.44bn in foreign aid reached the Pacific in 2019, which is about 8% of the region’s GDP.

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‘A great loss’: tributes pour in for pioneering PNG female doctor who died from Covid

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Naomi Kori Pomat, the first female doctor in her province, died in country’s first government-confirmed death of a health worker from virus

Tributes have poured in for a doctor in Papua New Guinea’s Western Province who died last week, in the country’s first death of a healthcare worker from Covid-19 confirmed by the government.

Dr Naomi Kori Pomat, 60, the director for curative health services at the Western Provincial Health Authority (WPHA), was medevaced to Port Moresby after contracting the virus and died on 19 September.

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Vanuatu to seek international court opinion on climate change rights

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The Pacific island nation wants clarity on the legal responsibilities owed to its people related to climate change

Vanuatu will ask the International court of justice for an advisory opinion on the rights of present and future generations to be protected from climate change.

With a population of about 280,000 people spread across roughly 80 islands, Vanuatu is among more than a dozen Pacific island nations facing rising sea levels and more regular storms that can wipe out much of their economies.

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‘Catastrophic pathway’: UN secretary general urges action to save Pacific lives

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Antonio Guterres said ‘more ambition from every country’ was required and that current emissions rates threatened the ‘very survival of Pacific communities’

The secretary general of the United Nations has told Pacific nations that a 45% cut in emissions by 2030 was needed globally to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, adding that continuing on the current trajectory “puts us on a catastrophic pathway”.

António Guterres was speaking at a virtual meeting with Pacific Island Forum leaders as part of the UN general assembly taking place in New York.

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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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The US strategy to counter China in the Pacific could be a $1bn misstep | Gerard Finin and Terence Wesley-Smith

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The US is proposing big spending, but initiatives are designed to undermine China rather than address actual needs on the islands

After decades of ambivalence, the United States plans to expand its footprint in the Pacific islands region to dimensions larger than at any time since the second world war.

But the Biden administration may be on the brink of embracing a flawed foreign policy initiative spanning almost one-third of the globe.

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Vaccines on horseback: Fiji doctors take long and muddy road to protect remote villages from Covid

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A team of medics hiked in the mountains for hours to take supplies to the small village of Nakida

To reach Nakida village in the highlands of Fiji, Dr Losalini Tabakei and her colleagues hiked for hours, up and down mountains, through forests, down muddy slopes, across rivers and along treacherous ridges with steep slopes of bamboo forest on either side.

Their supplies – clothing, medical equipment and, crucially, the Covid-19 vaccines they were bringing to administer to the remote community of just 60 people – were sent separately on horseback; the vaccines in refrigerated boxes, the rest in bags wrapped in plastic. The horses took the longer but flatter route to the town along the river.

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