Pacific Islands Forum

Through workshops and bilateral meetings with different government officials, ministries and other relevant partners at the Central Government Office in Port Moresby, discussions surrounded firstly, the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent and its implementation plan. Nayasi highlighted how the leaders of Pacific Island Forum member countries including Papua New Guinea in 2023 endorsed the implementation plan at Rarotonga, Cook Islands.

Papua New Guinea was chair for three years.

Marape was in Suva, Fiji attending the 51^st Pacific Islands Forum. 

At the ceremony, Marape said, “For your trust and confidence in Papua New Guinea’s Chairmanship, it was not easy. The incoming Chairman, Prime Minister of Vanuatu, Bob Loughman thanked Papua New Guinea for holding the Chairmanship for the past several years which were tough and committed to implementing the Objectives of the MSG. 

Ms Harris will make a series of announcements at a surprise virtual meeting with leaders in Suva on Wednesday and reveal that the administration will craft the first comprehensive US national strategy on the Pacific.

This includes plans to open two new US embassies in the region — one in Tonga, and another in Kiribati, which over the weekend announced that it was pushing ahead with its plan to pull out of the PIF.

The allegations raise serious press freedom concerns and alarm about the ability of Pacific journalists to do their jobs, particularly as the relationship between the region and China becomes closer.

Wang is midway through a marathon trip visiting eight countries in 10 days. He has held bilateral meetings in Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Samoa and Fiji to date, with trips to Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste to come.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi is in the middle of a marathon tour of the region, visiting eight countries in 10 days, a trip that security experts have said represents a dramatic “uptick in tempo” of China’s push for influence in the region.

Officials representing Beijing have been working slowly and, for the most part, quietly in the small island nations that dot the vast Pacific Ocean – cementing allies, funding infrastructure projects, conducting concerted person-to-person diplomacy.

But this week Beijing upped the tempo.

She said this when addressing the Pacific Islands Forum on her first bilateral visit to Fiji.

“I understand that climate change is not an abstract threat, but an existential one.

Wong repeated a statement made at the Pacific Islands Forum Boe Declaration on Regional Security from 2018, “We reaffirm that climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific.”

“I’m deeply honoured to be here at the Pacific Islands Forum – the pre-eminent Pacific Institution, the heart of Pacific regionalism. For more than 50 years, the Forum has brought us together in the Pacific way. Through the Forum, Pacific nations have championed their interests on the international stage – and led international thinking on issues such as climate.”

Australia is a founding member of the Forum, a membership they treasure, said Wong.

“We will increase Australia’s overseas development assistance to the pacific by $525 million over the next four years, working with you to recover from the pandemic.”

“I know that Pacific women have a key role to play in your recovery, and in your economic development,” added Wong.

“Societies work better, economies work better, communities work better, when we remove barriers to participation of women and girls, when all have an equal place in national life.

The five northern Pacific states, Palau, Nauru, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, vowed early last year to pull out of the organisation.

They were angry their nominee for secretary general, Marshall Islands diplomat Gerald Zackios, had been overlooked in favour of Cook Islands Prime Minister Puna.

The spokesman for the FSM government said the Micronesian states have been given an undertaking by both New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne that Mr Puna is to step down by June.