Who Speaks for the Pacific? – Foreign and Security Policy

The Pacific Islands—a grouping largely made up of small island developing states—find themselves at the center of an increasingly contested strategic space, making regional politics an important and closely watched space. In late August, the Pacific Islands Forum leaders gathered in Tonga for the organization’s annual leaders’ meeting. In addition to the Pacific Island leaders, other dignitaries were in attendance, including United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. This is the highlight of the regional calendar, and it came with a busy agenda, with topics ranging from climate change to transnational crime to health security. But one of the pressing issues facing the forum is an existential one, as debates over membership and geopolitical struggles make clear: who and what the Forum represents.

In recent years, divisions within the region have become visible, including the perceived marginalization of North Pacific states in what was initially called the South Pacific Forum. These tensions culminated in the decision of five Micronesian states to leave the forum in 2021, although this was later reversed. Yet the latest Forum communiqué shows that Pacific leaders are aligned on many issues, including agreed outcomes on health, education, fisheries and other key issues. Climate change was highlighted as “a priority for the Pacific region” and as an intersecting and wide-ranging issue affecting Pacific states. A new Pacific Policing Initiative – a proposal to establish a multinational Pacific police force and invest in sub-regional policing hubs – was endorsed, although in a nod to some debate over its implementation, leaders stressed the need for further consultation.

Emerging geopolitical frictions

However, a controversy over the final version of the communiqué underscores the continuing divisions within the Forum. In the communiqué, posted online Friday afternoon, paragraph 66 stated that “Leaders reaffirmed the 1992 Leaders’ decision on relations with Taiwan/Republic of China.” This referred to Taiwan’s long-standing status as a “development partner” of the Forum. Following public statements by China’s special envoy for the Pacific Qian Bo criticizing this language, the communiqué was taken offline and revised, removing the paragraph referring to Taiwan. Forum officials blamed the confusion on a clerical error.

Three of the Forum’s 18 full members recognize Taiwan: the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Tuvalu. While the Pacific was once a major focus of Taiwan’s diplomatic strategy, its influence in the region has waned in recent years with moves by the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Nauru to shift recognition to Beijing, spurred by a diplomatic offensive by the People’s Republic of China. In an increasingly contested geopolitical context, Taiwan’s status in relation to the Forum is likely to remain a difficult issue for member states.

The concept of sovereignty has always been relatively flexible within the Forum: founding members include the Cook Islands and Niue, countries in free association with New Zealand and not members of the UN.

In the face of increasing strategic competition, issues surrounding the Forum’s membership also raise existential questions for its future. In 2016, the French territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia became full members of the Forum. But their political status raises interesting questions for the Forum, particularly given the recent riots and ongoing tensions in New Caledonia. In the Forum communiqué, leaders confirmed a decision to send a mission to New Caledonia, a move that has been fraught; ahead of the meeting, the French ambassador to the Pacific had asserted that “New Caledonia is French territory and it is the (French) state that decides who enters.”

The communiqué also endorsed the associate membership applications of Guam and American Samoa, two U.S. territories with clear ambitions to achieve full membership status in the future, like New Caledonia and French Polynesia. The concept of sovereignty has always been relatively flexible in the Forum: founding members include the Cook Islands and Niue, countries in free association with New Zealand that are not member states of the United Nations and do not issue their own passports. Still, the 2016 decision represented a substantial shift in the principles of Forum membership, one that is likely to strengthen the full membership claims of other territories.

On the one hand, it can be argued that the Forum is becoming more representative by including more Pacific political entities and recognizing the remarkable diversity of political status in the region. On the other hand, a growing number of members raise questions about the influence of metropolitan powers such as France and the US on the Forum. This is already a loaded conversation given the perceived outsized influence of founding member states Australia and New Zealand.

In the past, leaders in the Pacific region have been outspokenly critical of the role of larger countries in the Forum, given power differentials and policy differences in key areas such as climate change.

France and the US, along with Australia and New Zealand, all have colonial histories – and, for many, an ongoing colonial presence – in the region. Given this context, their current and future roles in the Forum have been criticised for preventing the institution from being a truly Pacific space. Pacific leaders such as former Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama have in the past been outspokenly critical of the role of larger countries in the Forum, given power differentials and policy differences on key issues such as climate change.

Behind all these decisions and controversies lie fundamental questions: who has a voice in the Forum and who does not; who has the legitimacy to exert influence in the region and who does not. Resolving these issues in a way that strengthens the legitimacy of the Forum as the primary regional institution is an urgent and existential question. Amid this, it is also worth considering what was not on the Forum’s agenda. Even with two elected female leaders – President Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands and Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa of Samoa – and even after last year’s adoption of a Revitalised Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration, gender equality is absent from the 2024 communiqué.