Robert Seward, Small Island States Project: Pacific Island Securithy

Security reviews of the Pacific, when analysts thought to consider the region, have tended to comment on its relatively benign environment. With minor exceptions, external threats to the region have been few: The so-called “arc of instability” to Australia’s immediate north, a metaphor for security concerns in Indonesia, East Timor, and Solomon Islands, is one. The Indonesia/East Timor apprehension has given rise to questions about the security environment of Papua New Guinea, in view of its extensive border with West Papua and the perceived instability in Indonesia. And in the Solomon Islands, border incursions by Papua New Guinea Defense Forces pursuing Bougainville insurgents led to tension between the two countries. After years of simmering conflict, the PNG government negotiated an agreement with the Solomons permitting local border crossers in southern Bougainville and northern Solomons to pass freely.

But in the larger Pacific area of smaller developing states, the more common security concerns lie in a constellation of non-military categories: organized crime, terrorism, cyber attacks, illegal immigration, drug trade, illegal fishing, piracy at sea, and quarantine infringement. Other concerns include what military experts refer to as “lower level security operations,” that is, peacetime tasks such as evacuations and disaster relief primarily from periodic tropical cyclones. These too are security issues incorporated in the contemporary idiom.

SECURITY APPARATUS

There are few standing armies in the Pacific. The notable exceptions are Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga. In the case of Tonga, security is provided by the Tonga Defense Services (TDS) and the police force. Control of the 430-man TDS force is the responsibility of the Minister of Defense. There are civilian heads of defense in Fiji and Papua New Guinea as well. In Fiji, the military is professionally trained and engages in peacekeeping operations around the world. Regionally Fiji has forces in East Timor and on Bougainville island in Papua New Guinea. The Papua New Guinea Defense Forces is, by all reports, a destabilizing influence in the country, unruly, and through the years has been subject to charges of human rights violations.

For the most part, Pacific island states maintain police forces and a few patrol boats—supplied as official development assistance (ODA) from Australia. Maritime surveillance aircraft and intelligence capabilities are provided by Australia and New Zealand, the regional powers, and the United States. The monitoring and policing of maritime zones, however, are closely integrated with regional organizations such as the Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency, located in Honiara, Solomon Islands. Piracy and poaching are non-traditional areas of security concern but are of vital importance to the territorial integrity and economic security of the region.

The Solomon Islands, an archipelago stretching over 1,350 kilometers north to south, with a population of 450,000, is an example of a Pacific island nation without a regular military force. There are, however, a Solomon Islands National Reconnaissance and Surveillance Force and a Royal Solomon Islands Police (RSIP), both under civilian control. These forces, approximately 900-strong, enforce the law and ensure border security.

Palau, likewise, has no standing military. Under a Compact of Free Association with the United States, Palau relies on the United States for its defense. In return, the United States is granted access to certain facilities for the duration of the compact. Palau has its own local police and civilian law enforcement personnel, and its Marine Law Enforcement Division patrols marine borders with assistance from the Australian government. Consider, however, that Palau has only an estimated 18,500 people in a country of two hundred islands spread over an area of 629,000 square kilometers.

	Fiji	Papua New Guinea	Tonga
Branches	Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), includes ground and naval forces	Papua New Guinea Defense Forces (PNGDF), includes ground, naval, and air forces, and special forces unit	Tonga Defense Services (TDS), includes Royal Tongan Marines, Tongan Royal Guards, Maritime Force, Police; note: a new Air Wing, subordinate to the Defense Ministry, is being developed
Expenditures (USD)	$24 million (FY98)	$42 million (FY98)	NA
Expenditures, as percent of GDP	1.1% (FY98)	1% (FY98)	NA
Personnel under arms	3,796 (about 1,000 stationed abroad on peace- keeping missions)	4,000 (estimate) (government sought to reduce number by half, leading to mutiny in 2002)	430

Sources: Fiji Government Website, http://www.fiji.gov.fj/fijifacts/fijitoday2000.pdf ; CIA World Factbook, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/, 2001/03/15; Department of Defense, Papua New Guinea, http://www.defence.gov.pg/.

The Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia have similar defense agreements with the United States under a Compact of Free Association. In both cases, a national and local police forces are responsible for internal security. The U.S. Coast Guard patrols the region to protect the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) from foreign encroachment under the terms of various fisheries management agreements. As with other nations, this authority extends to the full 200-mile zone authorized by international law. Because of their spread-out geography, Pacific island nations have the largest EEZs in the world. Foreign fishers operating illegally in this zone are thus effectively stealing resources from these small island countries. Managers of fisheries have no way of measuring this loss, which is certain to be considerable. In any event, the U.S. Coast Guard is charged with enforcing the United Nations High Seas Driftnet Moratorium in the north Pacific.

In other parts of the Pacific, countries maintain assistance agreements with either Australia or New Zealand. The Cook Islands has no military force, relying on New Zealand, which guarantees its defense in consultation with and the concurrence of the local government. Similarly, Samoa has no formal defense structure, but it enjoys informal ties links to New Zealand, its former colonial power. Under the 1962 Treaty of Friendship, New Zealand is pledged to consider Samoan requests for assistance. In internal matters, the Samoa Police Force provides for security mainly in the capital Apia.

Kiribati is a central Pacific country of enormous geographical spread and a modest population of about 85,100. The country has a police force of 250 personnel to provide law enforcement functions and paramilitary obligations from police posts on thirty-three small islands. Police are under the control of the civilian government. While there is no regular military force, Australia and New Zealand provide defense assistance.

Nauru has no military presence. The country’s economy depends almost entirely on its phosphate deposits, which have been in severe decline, to support a small police force of fewer than one hundred for approximately 11,500 inhabitants. The law enforcement agency, the Directorate of the Nauru Police Force, the country’s law enforcement agency, is under civilian control. Nauru maintains an informal agreement with Australia for defense.

Vanuatu, in the western Pacific, is protected by the Vanuatu Police force, which includes the paramilitary Vanuatu Mobile Force, somewhat along the lines of nearby Solomon Islands National Reconnaissance and Surveillance Force. There is no regular military force in the country.

In New Caledonia and French Polynesia, France has defense responsibility, and the French military and police (the Gendarmerie) have a sizable presence. In New Caledonia, military expenditure exclusive of police is estimated at 5.5 percent of gross domestic product. (Figures for French Polynesia are unavailable.)

REGIONAL BODIES

Given the complexity of the Pacific in terms of jurisdictions, territories, and states, there is a reasonably well developed framework of regional organizations and institutions. Many deal with general policy or mandates regarding technical assistance. An example is the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (comprised of fourteen independent Pacific states, plus Australia and New Zealand) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC, formerly the South Pacific Commission, an amalgam of twenty-two states and territories). The Forum Secretariat is headquartered in Suva, Fiji, while the SPC is located on French territory in Noumea, New Caledonia.

There are also sector-specific bodies such as the regionally important Forum Fisheries Agency and the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme. Through these organizations, officials and heads of government have the opportunity for regular high-level meetings. Many consultations concern economic and resource management issues among island governments and the regional powers Australia and New Zealand. Security questions are raised at a variety of more specialized agencies—see Table 2.

AOSIS Alliance of Small Island States; coordinating group of world small island nation-states

ESCAP United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok

FFA Forum Fisheries Agency, Honiara, Solomon Islands; independent and self-governing Pacific island countries, plus Australia and New Zealand

PIF Pacific Islands Forum; regional inter-governmental organization formed for collective diplomacy by South Pacific states represented in the United Nations (see also Alliance of Small Island States)

SPC South Pacific Community (formerly South Pacific Commission), Noumea, New Caledonia; inter-governmental regional organization, holds annual meeting of 16 heads of government of independent and self-governing states, including Australia and New Zealand, including the Secretariat of SPC

There are additional organizations and commissions as well dealing with specialized areas of policy such as fishing. An example is the recently formed Commission for the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific.

Most states in the region are well represented internationally. The central Pacific state of Kiribati is a case in point. The country is a member of the following international organizations: African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Oceania Customs Organization (OCO), UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Conference on Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), International Committee for Radionuclide Metrology (ICRM), World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) and International Finance Corporation (IFC), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRCS), International Labor Organization (ILO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Intelsat (a nonsignatory user), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Co-operation Agreement (SPARTECA), Pacific Community (SPC), Pacific Island Forum (SPF), United Nations (UN), UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Universal Postal Union (UPU), World Health Organization (WHO), and an applicant to the World Trade Organization. Among small island states, Kiribati is by no means unique.

Of Pacific regionwide organizations, one might point to the Pacific Islands Forum as being the premier organization for regular high-level meetings of island governments. Member states and dialogue partners are listed in Table 3. It is at the Forum or some of its sector-specific bodies such as the Forum Regional Security Committee that regional vulnerabilities are discussed. Some of the topics raised in recent years range from political constraints on development in the region, to ethnic and community tensions, to the dominance of local interests over national interests, to the relatively weak institutions of governance, as well as to weakness in those institutions responsible for law and order. Another area of consultation concerns trans-border issues that are an increasing feature of the region. These include the impact of terrorism, criminal activities, and communicable diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS.

The Forum meets each year at the head-of-government level. Immediately after this, post-Forum meetings are conducted at the ministerial level with Forum dialogue partners:

INSECURITY

Security is ordinarily provided to a populace by military and police forces. But in several Pacific island nations, civilians may require security from these forces.

In March 2002, citing redundancy in the military and an ailing economy, the Papua New Guinea government announced plans to reduce by half the number of personnel under arms. Reacting strongly, a hundred junior soldiers in East Sepik seized control of a main barracks and set fire to two buildings. In a week-long mutiny that was the second such incident of the year, tensions escalated as PNG Defense Forces at two other locations joined the revolt against the government’s plans. Weapons were taken. As the disorder spread to Port Moresby, the capital, students took to the streets to protest economic reforms. Soldiers and students demanded, among other things, that Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta expel foreign advisors, including Australian and World Bank and IMF officials. In the aftermath of the mutiny, the government was forced to grant amnesty to the soldiers and to put the downsizing on hold.

In nearby Solomon Islands, there have been indications of political and extrajudicial killings. In 1999, police had confrontations with armed militants on Guadalcanal, shooting and killing at least two and—reports vary—as many as six. In one incident, the Solomons’ government invited New Zealand officials to investigate the killing. The police officer was found to have acted outside his orders. He was later tried and found guilty of manslaughter.

In June 2000, a paramilitary group called Malaita Eagle Force, in collusion with ethnic Malaitans in the Royal Solomon Islands Police, took control of the police armory and staged a defacto coup. The prime minister was forced to resign. In the ensuing strife through the end of the year, an estimated 100 people were killed.

At one point during tensions, the International Red Cross estimated that nearly 23,000 people from the island of Malaita were forced to flee their homes on Guadalcanal, where the capital, Honiara, is located. With assistance from national and international organizations, the Solomons’ government provided the Malaitan refugees with temporary shelter, transport, and resettlement assistance. This was not the end of difficulties as some Guadalcanal villagers abandoned their homes to hide in the bush for fear of police retribution—so-called “payback”—from dispossessed Malaitans.

Inter-ethnic conflicts have now spread from the capital to more remote areas of the country: in Temotu, in parts of the western Solomons, and elsewhere. As is the case with Fiji, the core of the crisis is a failure to address widespread injustices, particularly those involving land.

But the situation in Fiji is even more knotty and complicated. Briefly, after a prolonged period of political, social, and economic instability, Fiji has returned to parliamentary democracy after general elections in August and September 2001. The country’s democratic processes were disrupted in May 2000 when a group of ethno-terrorists, led by George Speight demanding an indigenous Fijian government, seized control of the Parliament. For fifty-six days the prime minister, the cabinet, and officials of the government were held hostage at gun point. Military authorities abrogated the 1997 Constitution, and three successive unelected interim administrations were subsequently installed. Rulings by the Fiji High Court and Court of Appeal that the 1997 Constitution remained the supreme law of the land led in 2001 to general elections of a new parliament and cabinet under Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, who had originally been appointed by the military authorities.

Effects of the coup d’etat on the economy of the country have been severe in all sectors. Tourism, Fiji’s main foreign exchange earner, which ordinarily brings in around 20 percent of GDP, plummeted. Two or three years after the coup, visitor arrivals have picked up somewhat, but the economy has not fully recovered.

The period during and after the hostage-taking has been a confusing mix of events and counter-events. The military played a prominent part in restoring national order, but not without difficulty within its own ranks. Figure 1, from FijiLive.com, documents a gun battle between loyalist soldiers and the mutinous Counter Revolutionary Warfare unit.

In November 2000 during an attempted coup d’etat, divisions within the Fiji military attempted a mutiny, which left eight soldiers dead. The soldier pictured here, Captain Amelia Tadu, was among twenty-eight wounded; she was treated at a hospital and survived. Source: FijiLive.com from Reuters, 2000/11/02.

Fiji is a multiracial, multicultural country. Indigenous Fijians are estimated to make up 51 percent of the population. Indo-Fijians, descendents of immigrants from India who were brought to the country as plantation laborers over a hundred years ago, number some 42 percent of the population. There are as well small percentages of Asians, Caucasians, and other Pacific islanders in a population of a little over 776,000. Ethnicity is a dominant factor in Fijian political and social life. For example, Indo-Fijian families largely control private businesses, while, on the other hand, indigenous Fijians largely head government ministries and, significantly, comprise most of the military ranks.

The Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), while small by international standards, is a professional contingent. It is under the authority of the Ministry for Home Affairs, as is the police. In 1999, the Fiji Intelligence Service was dissolved, an act that left the service members with strong resentment. Former members of the service’s Counter Revolutionary Warfare unit attempted a takeover of the military in November 2000 but were defeated.

As indicated, with the ethnic distinctions entrenched between the public and private sectors in Fiji, the military and the police are comprised almost exclusively by indigenous Fijians. This has generated tensions in the populace, with the Indo-Fijians accusing the police of false arrests and maltreatment of detainees. During the Speight incident, there were credible reports of human rights abuses by the military as well. The case of Fiji illustrates the difficulty in defining security—or even peace—given the differing views about what security represents and how to achieve it. Clearly the definition depends on what segment of the population is involved.

Papua New Guinea presents a similar contrast in the case of the insurgency on Bougainville where the PNG Defense Forces were dispatched to respond to complaints by the copper mining company on the island. The clash between Defense Forces and the then-formed Bougainville Revolutionary Army dragged on over a brutal ten-year period. The uneasy peace now in place continues to be punctuated by sporadic violence.

This theme of ethnic, intraregional conflict is played out in situations elsewhere in the Pacific as well—in, for example, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia.

Vanuatu: the Santo Rebellion, intervention by PNG at the request of the Vanuatu government, 1979–80

Papua New Guinea: insurgency in Bougainville, 1990s; independence movement for Oro; “tribal fighting” in the Highlands; mutiny, including the Sandline Affair

Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia, Kiribati, Rotuma, Tuvalu: no overt conflict, but independence movements and threats of secession

An issue that has received little attention outside the region is racially motivated crimes against Asians. In particular, Tonga has seen an increase in crime—harassment, theft, assault—against the approximately three hundred Chinese in the kingdom, many of whom are recent immigrants. Similar tensions have flared in American Samoa, where Asians have taken over a majority of businesses.

The Chinese presence in the Pacific is not recent, however. Over the more than one hundred years that they have been resident in various island nations, Chinese have established themselves in retail trades and the restaurant business. “Chinatowns,” consisting of a few stores or streets, are not uncommon sights. In the Solomon Islands, the Chinese have a long and rich history; their presence today can be seen in the capital Honiara as well as in remote Gizo and elsewhere.

The economic success of recent Chinese immigrants has been a source of friction with the indigenous people, who claim the displacement of local businesses. With other recent Asian immigrants settling throughout the Pacific, certainly in the French territories as well as in Micronesia and Melanesia, there are clear security implications from an intrastate perspective.

The cases presented here are representative of the increasing unrest across the region. As Noel Levi, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, stated in March 2002, the Pacific is no longer safe: “Unless a real effort is made by regional governments to improve good governance, the image of the Pacific as a zone of peace and stability is fast becoming something of the past.” Secretary General Levi linked the changes to a lack of development in the Pacific, stating that the increased poverty “is resulting in thousands of islanders struggling to make ends meet.” Corruption and instability, he observed, were on the rise.

Australian Broadcasting Company’s News Online captioned this image a “racial attack.” In the rebel-held Parliament, George Speight announced in May 2000 that he was seizing power. Ethnic tensions between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians ran high. After days of looting and arson attacks, where Indo-Fijian shops were targeted, the government declared a state of emergency. Source: ABC News OnLine, http://www.abc.net.au/news/fiji/default.htm, 2000/07/01.

Hindering resolution of these intrastate conflicts is the fact that no common agreement exists among island states over an appropriate response to security threats—internal or external. One regional body where resolution could be hammered out, the Pacific Islands Forum, has failed to respond to various regional crises; it proved helpless during the three coups in Fiji, at the height of the Bougainville insurgency in Papua New Guinea, and during conflict between Guadalcanal locals and Malaitans in the Solomons. To some extent, the Pacific Forum’s lack of response is a consequence of its restricted mission, but the body has suffered under weak political leadership, a state of affairs that Forum Secretary General Levi acknowledges. In the face of security threats over the last ten to fifteen years, coordination by the organization has been ineffectual, despite institutional mechanisms in place such as the Forum Regional Security Committee. On a positive note, the Pacific does have an abundance of institutions that can be tapped and invigorated, among them the Pacific Islands Law Officers Meeting—see Table 2.

Several proposals have recently been offered by the Forum Secretariat as practical responses to regional conflict. They include the use of eminent persons, fact-finding missions, third-party mediation, and the convening of a high-level Forum Regional Security Committee Meeting and ad hoc Ministerial Meetings of Members. This is encouraging, even as observers note certain parallels between the Forum and the ASEAN Regional Forum: Both organizations have failed to respond in crisis (East Timor for the ARF, Fiji and the Solomon Islands for the Forum); both are constrained by a lack of consensus on support to communities torn by strife; and the constituencies of both are loath to intervene in the internal affairs of member states. Given these circumstances, it is perhaps not too strong to suggest that regionwide security planning has done little to guarantee the national security of most Pacific islanders.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES

Throughout most of the Pacific, low economic growth and employment rates, high birth rates, and worsening fiscal situations have set back the ability of governments to improve the living standards of their island populations. Out-migration, once a reliable source of revenue through remittances, has become controversial in countries like Australia and New Zealand where Pacific islanders have gone to find work, and the well is running dry. This has occurred even as, in recent years, the flow of private sector investment into the Pacific island economies has slowed considerably. In any event, Pacific states have limited economic capacities, in part due to size and a restricted resource base. In 2001, Pacific states as an aggregate suffered negative growth—a 0.8 percent contraction—although the Asian Development Bank Outlook 2002 forecasts recovery to modest positive numbers in the current year. Forum Secretary General Levi, noting these numbers, has called for commitment to longer-term development cooperation both in the civil and military fields. Donor fatigue, however, seems to be on the rise.

Australia and Japan are still the region’s largest aid donors, but under economic strains at home Japan is reducing its commitment. As the region’s largest donor, Australia through AusAid will give approximately US$91 million to the region’s governments and institutions for 2002. New Zealand, whose aid commitment has declined to 40 percent of Australia’s, has seen its influence diminish in the face of increasing aid diplomacy of other countries. Australia and New Zealand, however, have by far the most extensive security ties in the region and would bear the brunt of any crisis. Former New Zealand diplomat Michael Powles sees storm warnings in the region, with the situation in the Solomons not boding well for the future: “People-smugglers [could] start to use it, arms come through it and then you get drug suppliers who fill this vacuum… Of course in the past couple of weeks we’ve had Taiwanese waste-dumpers who suddenly decide the Solomons need their product.”

Ambassador Powles has reason for worry. The fact is that most Pacific island economies are small and rely on imports for their basic commodities. This makes them vulnerable because their export base is also narrow—based on fish, a limited range of agricultural products such as copra and timber, tourism, and labor. With the public service sector accounting for a large percent of total employment, the private sector is poorly developed. Most Pacific island states rely on foreign assistance; up to one-third of GDP is not uncommon. For internal reasons, island states have not adapted their economies to take advantage of increased global trade or economic integration. Government accountability is a serious impediment regionwide, and there is little inclination to address fiscal and balance-of-payment difficulties, particularly where collective tensions ride high and tribal and ethnic interests dominate the collective or national interest. With grim prospects, states turn to various schemes to enhance revenue, including the selling of passports and nationality.

In the face of such circumstances, political debate about national security is not high on the agenda of most Pacific states. They have their hands full with ethno-nationalism on the rise. They have to deal with disrupted states (the Solomon Islands and Fiji), refugees and illegal immigration, environmental degradation, globalization, pandemics, narcotics, transnational crime, social forces, and human rights—all issues that do not that readily come to mind when dealing with national security structures. The security climate has changed since the end of the Cold War, and the smaller Pacific island states can no longer rely on their remoteness as exempting them from larger world events. At some point after the Cold War, Pacific states could bask in their “strategic neglect” by outside interests. In the modern world, it has now a truism that security goes beyond the physical protection of territory. Beyond outside threats, island states are their own worse security risk.

If there is a general correlation between economic prosperity and security, then Pacific island states are losing the battle. While the correlation is not absolute, the rich-poor gap is widening in the Pacific and anecdotal evidence points to rising resentment and hostility that often runs along the ethnic divide. In “Enhancing Pacific Security,” his report for the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Ron Crocombe writes:

Those with little to lose are the easiest to mobilize to try to overcome their problems or express their frustrations through conflict. One major way to enhance security in the Pacific is for the economies to grow, for people to have more quality goods and services which they value, for opportunities for employment to grow, for commerce and other activities to widen, and for the quality of education, health and other services to improve. In doing so, however, it is essential to ensure reasonable equity, and to adopt policies to ensure that Pacific Islanders earn a good proportion of the benefits derived.

Crocombe, citing the examples of Singapore and Malaysia, suggests that investment should come from within. While Singapore would seem to provide an apt comparison because it too is an island state, any similarities stop there. The population of Singapore is around 4.3 million. Fiji, one of the larger states in the Pacific, has a population of 845,000, while most other island states are smaller by orders of magnitude. Crocombe points out that ideally investment comes where people feel safe and where they believe that their efforts will prove profitable. In the Pacific, however, what investment often encounters is government interference, inefficiency, and corruption. (Nearly every aid donor has joined the chorus in demanding better governance.) Land policies alone have been a persistent cause of security breaches, economists noting further that uncertainty over land title plays a large part in sluggish economic growth. But politicians have shied from this highly volatile task because of the great risk to their position. To that extent, Crocombe is right to urge Pacific leaders to “look within.”

Caption from Fiji's Daily Post: “The face of despair... Ram Suresh, 34, and his two children in front of their Naila home.” Mr. Suresh is dismantling his home because of an expired land lease. As in most Pacific island nations, the control and ownership of land are highly sensitive and contentious issues. The Fiji land ownership system was established at the convenience of the British colonial administration. The idea was to protect the interests of the indigenous Fijians, establish an orderly system for agricultural land leases—primarily related to sugar cane production—and to support the colonial government through taxes. Indigenous Fijians currently hold, communally, about 83 percent of land, the state holds another 10 percent, and only the remaining 7 percent is freehold land. In 2000, 1,133 leases expired forcing many Indo-Fijian farmers off the land. Source: FijiLive.com from Fiji’s Daily Post, "Nausori Families Hit by Expiring Leases," 2000/11/18.

Although there is little evidence across the region of a willingness to confront its problems, it is a positive sign that at least recognition of these problems exists. Ieremia Tabai, formerly President of Kiribati and recently Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, observes: “The real threat to the Pacific Islands comes from within, from policies pursued by our governments…which undermine our ability to function effectively….” Indeed, the problems are dire. AusAid’s warning about Papua New Guinea at the end of 2001 went down the list: the rural heartland in serious social and economic crisis, living standards worsening, population increasing rapidly, resource base being depleted, income opportunities decreasing, access to services declining, infrastructure deteriorating, effective governance hard to find. A country risk assessment on Papua New Guinea issued in January 2002 by Australia’s Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (EFIC) was no less harsh: the country was “in terminal decline” and could become “ungovernable and insolvent.”

One area where there is regional agreement on security threats concerns the patrolling of the 200-mile EEZs surrounding the island states. Because few states have a standing army or navy, air surveillance for patrols are, for the most part, an activity that the regional powers Australia and New Zealand are relied upon to provide.

SMALL ISLAND STATES PROJECT

REGIONAL SECURITY IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS--PART 2

SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

SECURITY APPARATUS

REGIONAL BODIES

INSECURITY

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES