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Despite claims of a Pacific ‘Step-up’ and ‘Reset’, very little has changed in Australia and New Zealand’s attitude to the region, former Secretary of Papua New Guinea’s Department of Foreign Affairs Leonard Louma writes. I have been pondering the ways Pacific countries can work with their traditional development partners, particularly Australia and New Zealand, in…

AFP 2021 is proving a more difficult pandemic year for the Pacific Island region than last year, emphasising the need for need more vaccines and long-term health infrastructure, Hugh McClure writes. Australia’s vaccine diplomacy in the Pacific Island region reached a major milestone, with news that the country has now delivered one million vaccines. Zed…

Papua New Guinea and Fiji are facing large budget deficits in the wake of COVID-19, while Australia is set to surpass one million vaccines delivered to the Pacific, Hugh McClure writes. There are now more than 17,000 active COVID-19 cases in isolation in Fiji, after the country recorded its worst day of the pandemic to-date, with…

William West / AFP Pacific island nations are increasingly paying the price for the high-value drug markets of Australia and New Zealand. Jose Sousa-Santos writes that transnational crime is increasing in the region and more co-operation is needed to combat it. In 2018 I was sitting at a large table in a meeting room in…

As the severe and urgent nature of the climate crisis becomes more apparent, governments around the world must take heed of the experts and Pacific peoples who are sounding the alarm, Ben Bohane writes for the Pacific Wayfinder series. “The more we know, the worse it looks”. The world’s peak body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental…