As Israel expands its relationships with Pacific Island nations, an activist is criticising the region for its “dreadful response” to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rooted in the 1948 Nakba and decades of seized land and expelled indigenous people, escalated after Hamas’ attacks on 7 October 2023.

Since then, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health officials.

• READ MORE: UN declares man-made famine in Gaza; 2 people starve to death in 24 hours
• Israel announces official visit to Pacific region to ‘broaden partnerships’
• Other Pacific and Israel reports

John Minto, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). says the Pacific has failed to show adequate support to Palestine and should be “ashamed”.

In an interview with William Terite on Radio 531pi Pacific Mornings, Minto said the Pacific was one of the few areas in the world where support for the Palestinians was diminishing.

“I think this is a real tragedy,” he said.

“They are coming under pressure from the US and from Israel to try and bolster support for Israel at the United Nations. For this part of the world, that’s something we should be ashamed of.”

Minto said several island countries, including Fiji, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga, had refused to recognise Palestinian statehood. But bigger Pacific nations like Papua New Guinea — and Fiji — had recently established an embassy in Jerusalem.

Fiji and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1970 and have developed partnerships in security, peacekeeping, agriculture, and climate change.

Watch John Minto’s full interview

In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced its commitment to diplomacy in the Pacific.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel will lead a delegation to the Pacific to discuss strengthening Israel-Pacific relations.

In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced its commitment to diplomacy in the Pacific.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel will lead a delegation to the Pacific to discuss strengthening Israel-Pacific relations.

The Pacific region has been one of Israel’s strategic development partners, through numerous projects and training programmes led by MASHAV, Israel’s International Development Agency,” the statement read.

“This forthcoming visit, and the broader diplomatic effort accompanying it, reflects Israel’s profound appreciation for the Pacific Island states and underscores Israel’s commitment to strengthening cooperation with them.”

Minto highlighted the irony in the support for Israel from small Pacific nations, given their reliance on principles of international law in view of their own vulnerability.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of things that happen behind closed doors that should be happening out in the public,” he told Terite.

“The people of Sāmoa, Tonga, Fiji should be involved in developing their foreign policy. I think if they were, then we would have much stronger support for Palestine.”

Republished from Pacific Media Network (PMN) with permission.

In the absence of any measures taken by the New Zealand government to respond to the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick is doing the principled thing by trying to apply countervailing pressure on Israel to stop its brutal actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

New Zealand is a state party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

As a contracting party New Zealand has a clear obligation to respond to a genocide when it is indicated and which it must “undertake to prevent and to punish”.

• READ MORE:  ‘Wiped out’: Israel kills ‘entire family’ in latest attacks on Gaza
• Other articles by John Hobbs

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, deemed that a “plausible genocide” is occurring in Gaza. That was a year ago. Thousands of Palestinians have died since the ICJ’s determination.

The New Zealand government has failed its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention by applying no pressure to influence Israel’s military actions in Gaza. There are a number of interventions New Zealand could have chosen to take.

For example, a United Nations resolution which New Zealand co-sponsored (UNSC 2334) when it was a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2015-16 required states to distinguish in their trading arrangements between Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank and the rest of Israel.

New Zealand could have extended this to all trading arrangements with Israel.

Diplomatic pressure needed
Diplomatic pressure could have been put on Israel by expelling the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand. Finally, New Zealand could have shown well-needed solidarity with Palestine by conferring statehood recognition.

In contrast, Swarbrick is looking to bring her member’s Bill to Parliament to apply sanctions against Israel for its ongoing illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza).

The context is the UN General Assembly’s support for the ICJ’s recent report which requires that Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem comes to an end.

New Zealand, along with 123 other general assembly members, supported the ICJ decision. It is now up to UN states to live up to what they voted for.

Swarbrick’s Bill, the Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill, responds to this request, in the absence of any intervention by the New Zealand government. The Bill is based on the Russian Sanctions Act (2022), brought forward by then Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta, to apply pressure on Russia to cease its military invasion of Ukraine.

While Swarbrick’s Bill has the full support of the opposition MPs from Labour and Te Pāti Māori she needs six government MPs to support the Bill going forward for its first reading.

Andrea Vance, in a recent article in the Sunday Star-Times, called Swarbrick’s Bill “grandstanding”. Vance argues that the Greens’ Bill adopts “simplistic moral assumptions about the righteousness of the oppressed [but] ignores the complexity of the conflict.”

‘Confict complexity’ not complicated
The “complexity of the conflict” is a recurring theme which dresses up a brutal and illegal occupation by Israel over the Palestinians, as complicated.

It is hardly complicated. The history tells us so. In 1947, the UN supported the partition of Palestine, against the will of the indigenous Palestinian people, who comprised 70 perent of the population and owned 94 percent of the land.

In 1948, Jewish paramilitary groups drove more than 700,000 Palestinian people out of their homeland into bordering countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, the UAE) and beyond, where they remain as refugees.

Finally, the 1967 illegal occupation by Israel of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This occupation, which multiple UN resolutions has termed illegal, is now over 58 years old.

This is not “complicated”. One nation state, Israel, exercises total power over a people who have been dispossessed from their land and who simply have no power.

It is the unwillingness of countries like New Zealand and its Anglosphere/Five-Eyes allies (United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia) and the inability of the UN to enforce its resolutions on Israel, which makes it “complicated”.

Historian on Gaza genocide
One of Israel’s most distinguished historians, Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim at Oxford University, in his recently published book Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine, now chooses to call the situation in Gaza “genocide”.

In arriving at this position, he points to the language and narratives being adopted by Israeli politicians:

“Israeli President Isaac Herzog proclaimed that there are no innocents in Gaza. No innocents among the 50,000 people who were killed and nearly 20,000 children.

“There are quotes from [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] that are genocidal, as well as from his former Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, who said we are up against ‘human animals’.

“I hesitated to call things genocide before October 2023, but what tipped the balance for me was when Israel stopped all humanitarian aid into Gaza. They are using starvation as a weapon of war. That’s genocide.”

There is growing concern among commentators about the ability of international rules-based order to function and hold individuals and states to account.

Institutions such as the UN, the ICJ and the ICC are simply unable to enforce their decisions. This should not come as a surprise, however, as the structure of the UN system, established at the end of the Second World War was designed to be weak by the victors, with regard to its enforcement ability.

Time NZ supports determinations
It is time that New Zealand supported these same institutions by honouring and looking to enforce their determinations.

Accordingly, New Zealand needs to play its part in holding Israel to account for the atrocities it is inflicting on the Palestinian people and stand behind and support the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Swarbrick is absolutely right to introduce her Bill.

At the very least it says that New Zealand does care about the plight of the Palestinian people and is willing to stand behind them. It is the morally correct thing to do and incumbent on the government to provide support to Swarbrick’s Bill — and not just six of its members.

John Hobbs is a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

A new carbon credit trading deal reached in the final hours of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, has been criticised as a free pass for countries to slack off on efforts to reduce emissions at home.

The deal, sealed at the annual UN climate talks nearly a decade after it was first put forward, will allow countries to buy carbon credits from others to bring down their own balance sheet.

New Zealand had set its targets under the Paris Agreement on the assumption that it would be able to meet some of it through international cooperation — “so getting this up and running is really important”, Compass Climate head Christina Hood said.

• READ MORE: Fractious COP29 lands $300bn climate finance goal, dashing hopes of the poorest
• Other COP29 climate crisis reports

“It’s a tool, it’s neither good nor bad, but there’s going to have to be a lot of scrutiny on whether the government is taking a high-ambition, high-integrity path, or just trying to do the minimum possible.”

The plan had taken nine years to go through because countries determined to do it right had been holding out for a process with the right checks and balances in place, she said.

As it stood, countries would have to report yearly to the UN on their trading activities, but it was up to society and other countries to scrutinise behaviour.

Cindy Baxter, a COP veteran who has been at all but seven of the conferences, said it was in-line with the way Aotearoa New Zealand wanted to go about reducing its emissions.

‘We’re not alone, but . . .’
“We’re not alone, Switzerland is similar and Japan as well, but certainly New Zealand is aiming to meet by far the largest proportion of our climate target, [out of] anywhere in the OECD, through carbon trading.”

The new scheme fell under Article six of the Paris Agreement, and a statement from COP29 said it was expected to reduce the cost of implementing countries’ national climate plans by up to US$250 billion (NZ$428.5b) per year.

COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev said “climate change is a transnational challenge and Article six will enable transnational solutions. Because the atmosphere does not care where emissions savings are made.”

But Baxter said there was not enough transparency in the scheme, and plenty of loopholes. One of the issues was ensuring projects resulting in carbon credits continued to reduce emissions after the credits were traded.

“For example, if you’re trying to save some mangroves in Fiji, you give Fiji a whole bunch of money and say this is going to offset this amount of carbon, but what if those mangroves are destroyed by a drought, or a great big cyclone?”

Countries should be cutting emissions at home, she said.

“And that is something New Zealand is not very good at doing, has a really bad reputation for doing. We’ve either planted trees, or now we’re trying to throw money at offset.”

Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson said she, too, was concerned it would take the onus off big polluters to make reductions at home, calling it a “get out of jail free card”.

‘Lot of junk credits’
“Ultimately, we really need to see significant cuts in climate pollution,” she said. “And there’s no such thing as high-integrity voluntary carbon markets, and a history of a lot of junk credits being sold.”

Countries with the means to make meaningful change at home should not be relying on other countries stepping up, she said

The Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Teanau Tuiono said there was strong potential in the proposal, but it was “imperative to ensure the framework is robust, and protects the rights of indigenous peoples at the same time as incentivising carbon sequestration”.

It should be a wake-up call to change New Zealand’s over-reliance on risky pine plantations and instead support permanent native afforestation, he said.

“This proposal emphasises how solving the climate crisis requires global collaboration on the most difficult issues. That requires building trust and confidence, by meeting commitments countries make to each other.

“Backing out of these by, for instance, restarting oil and gas exploration directly against the wishes of our Pacific relatives, is not the way do to that.”

Conference overall ‘disappointing and frustrating’
Baxter said it had been “very difficult being forced to have another COP in a petro-state”, where the host state did not have much to gain by making big progress.

“What that means is that there is not that impetus to bang heads together and get really strong agreement,” she said.

But the blame could not be placed entirely on the leadership.

“The COP process is set up to work if governments bring their A-games, and they don’t,” she said.

“People should be bringing their really strong new climate targets [and] very few are doing that.”

Another deal was clinched in overtime of the two-week conference, promising US$300 billion (NZ$514 billion) each year by 2035 for developing nations to tackle climate emissions.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

International outrage continues to reverberate as Israel ignores the International Court of Justice’s order to immediately cease its attack on southern Rafah, with UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese saying: “Israel will not stop this madness until we make it stop.”

Earlier, she had called for sanctions against Israel for defying the court order.

At least 35,903 people have been killed and 80,420 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, reports Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live news: Calls to declare famine in the enclave
• Other War on Gaza reports

The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s attack stands at 1139 with dozens still held captive.

The Israeli military holds 3424 “administrative detainees” — prisoners held indefinitely and without charge — mostly Palestinian and seized since October 7. This figure is  26 times more “hostages” than being held by Hamas.

Israel’s public radio, Radio Israel, has cited General Yair Golan, former deputy chief-of-staff of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), saying that “there will be no deal [between Israel and Hamas] without the cessation of fighting” in Gaza.

‘Let’s be real’
“Let’s be real with ourselves, and we will not listen to the poison machine coming out of Jerusalem,” the general was quoted as saying.

Dr Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, citing a report in Politico, said “70 percent of Hamas’s fighting force remains intact on fighting in Gaza” and that Hamas had been able to recruit thousands of new members.

Israel has 26x more hostages than Hamas pic.twitter.com/cOjyct2QMO

— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) May 25, 2024

The report, he said, also indicated Hamas’s extensive tunnel network under the Gaza Strip remained largely intact.

Professor Elmasry told Al Jazeera there had also been reports that Hamas had been able to repurpose unexploded Israeli bombs, so the Palestinian resistance group no longer had a weapons supply issue.

“I think Israel is clearly getting all it can handle on the battlefield right now,” he concluded.

Israeli forces were reported to be advancing on Jabalia, trying to take control of Gaza’s largest refugee camp.

Fighting intensifies
Fighting in the camp has intensified during the past two weeks as Israel continues with its military operation in the camp located in the north of the enclave.

Insult on injury.
The #US will have to go through full introspection, internal and external scrutiny over the disaster it has contributed to create in Gaza. https://t.co/oQ2YOQN8hk

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) May 25, 2024

Craig Mokhiber, a former top UN human rights official, has questioned the US plan to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza through a temporary pier after the US said four vessels supporting the pier were washed away in the high seas on Saturday.

Mokhiber, who resigned from the UN last year, described the pier as a “fig leaf to cover US complicity in genocide and in the destruction of UNRWA” in a post on X.

He said the pier had “failed to have any meaningful impact” while “Israel continues to block aid at all crossing points”.

Meanwhile, in Canberra the leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt, said his party would call a vote on Palestinian statehood in Australia’s Parliament this week, after a similar move announced by Ireland, Spain and Norway last week.

The United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote later today on a resolution that would grant new “rights and privileges” to Palestine and that — again — calls on the UN Security Council to favourably reconsider Palestine’s request for full UN membership, reports Al Jazeera.

The US vetoed a widely backed resolution on April 18 that would have paved the way for full UN membership for Palestine, a goal that Israel has worked strenuously to prevent and Washington has been instrumental in blocking on behalf of its key ally.

The US Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, said yesterday that the Biden administration remained opposed to Palestinian membership.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Aid operation ‘completely crippled’ amid attacks — Al Jazeera
• Other Israel’s War on Gaza reports

During the April 18 vote, Palestine’s application received strong support with a vote of 12 in favour, the UK and Switzerland abstaining, and the US alone in voting no.

The State of Palestine appealed for support on Thursday, saying a vote for UN membership comes at “a critical moment for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State … [and] rightful place among the community of nations”.

The State of #Palestine renews its appeal to all States for their support of the draft resolution when it is voted on by the General Assembly tomorrow morning, (#NYT) Friday, 10 May. A letter which clarifies our position & appeal @UN pic.twitter.com/llABBZX3l0

— State of Palestine (@Palestine_UN) May 9, 2024

Palestinians are facing a critical shortage of clean water as Israel continues air strikes on eastern Rafah and blocks humanitarian aid from entering the besieged enclave.

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has said that the Israeli military has not allowed anything or anyone to go in or get out of Gaza since its takeover of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.

“The closure of the crossings means no fuel. It means no trucks, no generators, no water, no electricity and no movement of people or goods. It means no aid,” he said.

Hamas says ‘ball in Israel’s hands’
French news agency AFP is reporting that Hamas announced early Friday that its delegation attending Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo had left the city for Qatar and stated that the “ball is now completely” in Israel’s hands.

“The negotiating delegation left Cairo heading to Doha. In practice, the occupation [Israel] rejected the proposal submitted by the mediators and raised objections to it on several central issues,” the group said in a statement, adding it stood by the ceasefire proposal.

“Accordingly, the ball is now completely in the hands of the occupation,” the group said.

According to Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting on the US President Joe Biden’s exclusive interview with Erin Burnett this week with CNN, “We saw President Biden come out and say, ‘look, if they do this large-scale invasion of Rafah — there will be no bombs, no artillery shells, perhaps none of the technologies that turn dumb bombs into smart bombs’.

“And he is not just saying that it is going to happen. He is showing that it is already sort of happening.”

A shipment of bombs — 1800 900kg bombs that cause massive destruction and 1700 230kg bombs — due for delivery to Israel have been “paused”.

As student protests calling for an immediate ceasefire and divestment from universities in Israel spread around the globe, academics at two universities in New Zealand have condemned administrations for not standing up for their role as a “critic and conscience of society”.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should act urgently to establish an international protection force to safeguard Palestinian civilians and ensure the unobstructed delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza as a last-ditch attempt to prevent imminent, says DAWN.

If the UNSC is blocked by a US veto or fails to reach consensus, the UN General Assembly should reconvene the 10th session of “Uniting for Peace” and authorise such a force itself.

Recent airdrops of aid, now with the participation of the US Air Force, are “inadequate to meet the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza”, says DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now).

• READ MORE: Mal­nour­ished chil­dren die at alarm­ing rate as Is­rael steps up Gaza at­tacks
• Open letter: Dear President Biden, why do you support genocide in Gaza?
• Other War on Gaza reports

It signals the availability of international military forces to help stabilise the situation.

“We urgently need the UNSC to authorise an international protection force to ensure the safe and effective delivery of food to starving Palestinian men, women, and children, just as it has done in other situations of catastrophic conflicts,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN.

“Tragically, without such intervention, it has become clear that Israel will continue to deliberately block such aid, which is the sole cause of the starvation and imminent famine in Gaza.”

On February 29, at least 117 Palestinians were killed, and more than 750 others were wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on civilians gathered at a convoy of food trucks southwest of Gaza City, highlighting both the desperation of the starving civilian population and their inability to safely access humanitarian aid.

Aid delivery halted
International humanitarian organisations have halted all aid delivery to northern Gaza for nearly two weeks due to the lack of security, which is a direct result of actions and policies of the Israeli military, including targeting Palestinian police forces attempting to secure aid delivery.

The Biden administration reportedly warned Israel last week that as a direct result of its actions, “Gaza is turning into Mogadishu”.

The same day, the UN Security Council met in an emergency session called by Algeria on what is now being described as the “flour massacre,” but members failed to agree on a statement about the deaths and injuries of civilians seeking aid.

At a meeting of the UNSC last week under the auspices of UNSC Resolution 2417, UN agencies warned that at least 576,000 people in Gaza were facing famine-like conditions.

The  UN World Food Programme noted that there would be an “inevitable famine” in the besieged Palestinian enclave, amid increasing reports of children dying of starvation as Israel continued to hinder aid delivery to the population.

Gaza was seeing “the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,” Carl Skau, deputy head of the World Food Programme, told the UN Security Council last week, with one child in every six under the age of two acutely malnourished.

“Civilians and aid groups have described food shortages so dire that people were turning to leaves and bird food and other types of animal feed for sustenance.”

A new World Bank report has found that Gaza’s total economic output had shriveled by more than 80 percent in the last quarter of 2023, 80 to 96 percent of Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed, and about 80 percent of Gazans had lost their jobs.

Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 9, Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive has killed more than 30,000, more than 10,000 of them children, and wounded more than 70,000 people.

“The whole world is watching in horror as Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, not only impeding the delivery of aid but actually firing and killing people desperately trying to obtain a few sacks of flour,” said Whitson.

“If the international community doesn’t have the guts to hold Israel accountable for its atrocities and end this grotesque, genocidal assault on Palestinian civilians, the very least it can do is establish a UN protection force to ensure the safe delivery of aid.”

• Read the full DAWN report here

Pacific Media Watch

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says Muslim Americans are “running out of words” to decry the US president’s support for the “genocide” in Gaza.

“The latest US veto of a UN ceasefire resolution is shameful,” CAIR director Nihad Awad said in a statement.

“President Biden should stop acting like Benjamin Netanyahu’s defence lawyer and start acting like the President of the United States,” reports Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Palestine live: US vetoes ceasefire as north Gaza starves
• Other War on Gaza reports

“We call on the American people to continue expressing their opposition to the Biden administration’s support for the Israeli government’s war crimes by contacting the White House and their elected officials and calling on them to demand a ceasefire, access to humanitarian aid, and the pursuit of a just, lasting peace.”

Meanwhile, Palestine’s envoy to the United Nations broke down in tears when giving a chilling address to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Riyad Mansour, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN, said that the “future of freedom, justice and peace can begin here and now”.

“A finding from this distinguished court that the occupation is illegal and drawing the legal consequences from this determination would contribute to bringing it to an immediate end, paving the way to just and lasting peace.”

ANALYSIS: By Treasa Dunworth

As Newsroom has reported, 15 aid agencies have joined forces to call on the Aotearoa New Zealand government to do more to encourage an immediate and sustainable ceasefire in Gaza, in the wake of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision.

Those 15 agencies are joining an international and increasingly loud chorus of calls for an immediate ceasefire.

I would go further, and remind the government that whatever it thinks of last month’s ICJ ruling, New Zealand has a number of international legal obligations to inform its response to Israel’s military attack on Gaza.

• READ MORE: In waging war on the UN refugee agency, the West is openly siding with Israeli genocide

As most international commentary has highlighted, even fixated on, the ICJ did not order a ceasefire as South Africa requested. But the fact that it didn’t is a manifestation of how constrained the court was.

Despite its lofty title, the ICJ (sometimes referred to as the “World Court”) isn’t a “world” court in any meaningful sense of the word. It only has jurisdiction to consider issues in cases where countries have explicitly agreed to the court’s authority over them.

In this current litigation, the court was able to consider the case only on the basis that both South Africa and Israel are States Parties to the Genocide Convention. That meant South Africa had to frame its application through a “genocide lens”, and that the court had no power to go beyond the obligations arising out of that treaty. This jurisdictional conundrum partly explains why the court did not order a ceasefire — it didn’t have the authority to do so.

It also partly explains why the court could not order Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages. Hamas was not a party to the proceedings (the court can only hear proceedings on disputes between states), and despite the claim by Israel in its oral pleadings, the hostage taking by Hamas and their subsequent mistreatment and killing didn’t “plausibly”, according to the court, meet the threshold of genocide.

But the court did order Israel to take all measures in its power to prevent genocide, and ordered Israel to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions faced by Palestinians in Gaza.

Orders fall within ‘genocide jurisdiction’
These orders fall within the “genocide jurisdiction” because the treaty defines genocide as not only direct killing, but also “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

An immediate ceasefire would go a long way toward Israel complying with these orders so the calls for a ceasefire are well made, despite the court not having the power to order one.

What is New Zealand’s role in all this? What are the moral and legal responsibilities it has and should fulfil?

In its decision, the court (re)confirmed that all states parties to the Genocide Convention have a “common interest” in ensuring the prevention, suppression, and punishment of genocide. That includes New Zealand, which has a legal obligation to do what it can to ensure that Israel complies with the court’s orders.

This is not a question of New Zealand’s choice of foreign policy, but a legal obligation.

The second relevant international obligation for New Zealand arises from international humanitarian law (IHL) — the body of law which governs the conduct of war, and which includes prohibitions against the direct targeting of civilians, causing superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering, the taking of hostages, the use of “human shields” and engaging in indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

These rules don’t just apply to the parties directly involved in any given conflict — in this instance, Israel and Hamas. The relevant treaties stipulate all states have a shared responsibility “to ensure respect” for these rules. That responsibility exists independently of the lack of ICJ jurisdiction to consider these matters.

Must act in good faith
There is a third legal obligation for New Zealand in the wake of these orders.  Although decisions of the court are only binding as between the parties to a case (here South Africa and Israel), as a member of the United Nations, New Zealand has a legal obligation to act in good faith towards the court, being one of the organs of the UN and its principal legal body.

This obligation aligns with New Zealand’s self-professed commitment to the international rule of law.

Thus, regardless of political preferences and whether the current government agrees or disagrees with the court’s findings, the findings have been made and New Zealand ought not undermine the court or the international rule of law.

Governments of all political persuasions repeatedly pronounce that a small nation such as ours depends on the international rule of law and a rules-based international order.

Now is the time for New Zealand to step up and defend that order, even if it feels uncomfortable, even if it annoys some of our “friends” (such as the US). We are legally obliged to step up and speak out.

Dr Treasa Dunworth is an associate professor, Faculty of Law, at the University of Auckland. First published by Newsroom and republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

Agnes Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, has called the funding cuts to the UN’s Palestinian humanitarian relief agency a “heartless decision” by some of the world’s richest countries “to punish the most vulnerable population on earth because of the alleged crimes of 12 people”.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, she added: “Right after the ICJ [International Court of Justice] ruling finding risk of genocide. Sickening.”

While nine Western nations, including the US, rushed to suspend UNRWA’s funding after allegations that members from the agency participated in the October 7 attack, the same countries have failed to formally revise their ties to Israel despite mounting reports of genocidal abuse by Israeli forces.

• READ MORE: Palestinian agency condemns funding cuts as ‘ collective punishment’
• Israel’s war on Gaza live: Aid cuts are ‘collective punishment’ – UNRWA
• More countries pause funds for UN Palestinian agency

Sickening heartless decision of the richest countries in the world to punish the most vulnerable population on earth because of the alleged crimes of 12 people. Right after the ICJ ruling finding risk of genocide. Sickening. https://t.co/ARrPqUdyHA

— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) January 28, 2024

The Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that “cutting off funding” to UNRWA at what he called a “critical moment” would only “hurt the people of Gaza who desperately need support”.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs highlighted the plight of some 1.9 million displaced Palestinians in Gaza with the main UN agency delivering humanitarian aid losing its major financial backing.

“Scenes of forcibly displaced people are a disgrace to humanity,” it said in a statement.

“Over half a million Palestinians in Khan Younis were instructed by the occupying forces to evacuate their homes, including hospitals and health centres, in a cruel expansion and deepening of forced displacement from southern regions.”

UNRWA employs about 13,000 people and provides humanitarian aid, education, health and social services to 5.9 eligible Palestinian refugees living in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

The UN agency received almost US$1.2 billion in pledged in 2020, with the US being the biggest donor providing $343.9 million. The fifth-largest donor, Norway, provided $34.2 million and is continuing is funding in spite of the action by the US and its allies.

A leading West Papuan advocate has welcomed this week’s launch of the Brussels Declaration in the European Parliament, calling on MPs to sign it.

“The Declaration is an important document, echoing the existing calls for a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua made by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS), and the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG),” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda.

“I ask all parliamentarians who support human rights, accountability, and international scrutiny to sign it.”

• READ MORE: European Parliament MPs demand UN visit to West Papua
• The Brussels Declaration on West Papua

The Brussels Declaration, organised by the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP), has also launched a new phase in the campaign for a UN visit.

European parliamentarian Carles Puigdemont, formerly president of the state of Catalonia that broke away illegally from Spain in 2017 and an ex-journalist and editor, said during the meeting that the EU should immediately halt its trade negotiations with Indonesia until Jakarta obeyed the “will of the international community” and granted the UN access.

“Six years have now passed since the initial invite to the High Commissioner was made — six years in which thousands of West Papuans have been killed and over 100,000 displaced,” said Wenda.

“Indonesia has repeatedly demonstrated that words of condemnation are not enough. Without real pressure, they will continue to act with total impunity in West Papua.”

‘Unified call’
Wenda said the call to halt European trade negotiations with Indonesia was not just being made by himself, NGOs, or individual nations.

“it is a unified call by nearly half the world, including the European Commission, for international investigation in occupied West Papua,” he said.

“If Indonesia continues to withhold access, they will merely be proving right all the academics, lawyers, and activists who have accused them of committing genocide in West Papua.

“If there is nothing to hide, why all the secrecy?”

Since 2001, the EU has spent millions of euros funding Indonesian rule in West Papua through the controversial colonial “Special Autonomy” law.

“This money is supposedly earmarked for the advancement of ‘democracy, civil society, [and the] peace process’,” Wenda said.

“Given that West Papua has instead suffered 20 years of colonialism, repression, and police and military violence, we must question where these funds have gone.

‘Occupied land’
“West Papua is occupied land. We have never exercised our right to self-determination, which was cruelly taken from us in 1963.

“States and international bodies, including the EU, should not invest in West Papua until this fundamental right has been realised. Companies and corporations who trade with Indonesia over our land are directly funding our genocide.”

Wenda added “we cannot allow Indonesia any hiding place on this issue — West Papua cannot wait any longer”.

South Africa has accused Israel of “genocidal intent” over its war on the besieged enclave Gaza Strip, and pleaded with judges at the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an interim order demanding Israel halt its military offensive in the embattled territory, reports Middle East Eye.

South African lawyer Adila Hassim told judges at The Hague that “genocides are never declared in advance, but this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies as a plausible claim of genocidal acts”.

“Israel deployed 6000 bombs per week . . . No one is spared. Not even newborns.

• READ MORE: ICJ hears South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over Gaza war
• Genocide in Gaza: A call to urgent global action – Backgrounder

UN chiefs have described it as a graveyard for children,” she said told the court on the opening session of the two-day preliminary hearing.

“Nothing will stop the suffering except an order from this court.”

Israel’s ongoing three-month war in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, lawyers told the court.

Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and an Israeli blockade severely limiting food, fuel and medicine has caused a humanitarian “catastrophe”, according to the UN.

‘Genocidal in character’
South Africa submitted its case against Israel at the ICJ last month and has said Israel’s actions in Gaza are “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group”.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another South African lawyer and legal scholar at the hearing, said Pretoria was not alone in drawing attention to Israel’s genocidal rhetoric.

He said that at least 15 UN special rapporteurs and 21 members of the UN working groups had warned that what was happening in Gaza reflected a genocide in the making.

Video: Middle East Eye

Ngcukaitobi added that genocidal intent was evident in the way Israel’s military was conducting attacks, including the targeting of family homes and civilian infrastructure.

“Israel’s political leaders, military commanders and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent.”

Ngcukaitobi said the “genocidal rhetoric” had become common within the Israeli Knesset, with several MPs calling for Gaza to be “wiped out, flattened, erased and crushed”.

Israeli defence
On Wednesday, Nissim Vaturi, a member of Israel’s ruling Likud party, said it was a “privilege” for his country to appear at The Hague as he doubled down on earlier remarks where he said there were “no innocent people” in Gaza.

This is the first time Israel is being tried under the United Nations’ Genocide Convention, which was drawn up after the Second World War in light of the atrocities committed against Jews and other persecuted minorities during the Holocaust.

During yesterday’s proceedings, Professor Max du Plessis, another lawyer representing South Africa, said Israel had subjected the Palestinian people to an oppressive and prolonged violation of their rights to self-determination for more than half a century.

Dr Du Plessis added that based on materials shown before the court, the acts of Israel were plausibly characterised as genocidal.

“South Africa’s obligation is motivated by the need to protect Palestinians in Gaza and their absolute rights not to be subjected to genocidal acts.”

Genocide cases, which are notoriously hard to prove, can take years to resolve, but South Africa is asking the court to speedily implement “provisional measures” and “order Israel to cease killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinian people in Gaza”.

Thank you Madiba. Thank you South Africa. #ICJ #ICJGenocideConvention pic.twitter.com/9xjdSR40MI

— Dr. Omar Suleiman (@omarsuleiman504) January 11, 2024

Three hour hearing
Yesterday’s hearing consisted of three hours of detailed descriptions detailing what South Africa says is a clear example of genocide. Israel will today have three hours to respond on Friday.

The spokesperson of the Israeli Foreign Affairs, Lior Haiat, hit out at the comments made in the hearing, calling it “one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy,” and demonstrated “false and baseless claims.”

He also accused South Africa of “functioning as the legal arm of the Hamas terrorist organisation”.

As South Africa did in its 84-page legal filing ahead of the case, the country’s Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola repeated that he “unequivocally condemns Hamas” for the October 7 attack on southern Israel.

Republished from Middle East Eye.

The full first day hearing – South Africa’s submissions. Video: Middle East Eye

The leader of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) has called for the establishment of a “United Indigenous Nations” for global justice and an end to Indonesia’s ‘malignant’ colonisation of West Papua.

Today — August 9 — is the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, as declared at the inaugural UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva in 1982.

OPM chairman and commander Jeffrey Bomanak said such a new global indigenous body would “not repeat the failure of the United Nations in denying any people their freedom”.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua decolonisation reports

“The integrity of indigenous peoples is not for sale,” he said in a stinging statement to mark the international day.

He offered an “independent” West Papua as host for the proposed United Indigenous Nations to lead international governance with an international forum representing — for the first time — the principled values and ideals of indigenous and First Nations peoples who were the “true guardians of our ancestral motherlands”.

He criticised the UN’s lack of action over decolonisation for indigenous peoples, blaming the body for allowing the “predatory destruction of the world caused by the economic multinational imperialists and their unsustainable greed”.

Citing the UN website for indigenous peoples, he highlighted the statement:

“Centuries-old marginalisation and other varying vulnerabilities are some of the reasons why indigenous peoples do not have the same possibilities of access to education, health system, or digital communications.”

And also:

“Violations of the rights of the world’s indigenous peoples have become a persistent problem, sometimes because of a historical burden from their colonisation backgrounds and others because of the contrast with a constantly changing society.”

Bomanak said that while these two quotes read well, they were “misrepresentative of the truth that has been West Papua’s tragic experience with the United Nations”.

‘Disingenuous manipulation’
“The facts are that the UN has prevented West Papua’s right to decolonisation through a disingenuous manipulation of the Cold War events of the 1960s,” he said.

“Indonesia’s invasion and illegal annexation of West Papua remains a malignancy in principle and diplomacy only matched by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But with different diplomatic outcomes applied by the UN Secretariat.

“The UN Secretariat acts with incredulous diplomatic effrontery to allegations of collusion and complicity with a host of other predatory nations, all eager to plunder West Papua’s natural resources — the world’s greatest El Dorado.”

He singled out Australia, China, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States for criticism.

Indigenous people knew the story of West Papua from their own experience with the same predatory nations and the “same prejudicial and corrupt geopolitics” that characterised the UN, Bomanak said.

“G20 conquerors and colonisers have never put down their swords and guns. They have never stopped conquering and colonising, either by military invasion or economic imperialism.

“They will never understand the indigenous perception of ancestral custodianship of our lands.

“The defence forces and militia groups of G20 nations still murder us in our beds and our beds are burning.”

Conflict of interest
The UN could not stop “global melting” because it was a conflict of interest with the “G20
business-as-usual paradigm of economic exploitation” fueling expansion economies.

“They will not stop until all our ancestral lands are one infertile wasteland. The UN is unable to resolve this self-defeating dynamic,” Bomanak said.

“The UN should be a democratic, progressive and 100 percent accountable institution. This is not West Papua’s experience.

“Six decades ago, the UN should have fulfilled the decolonisation of West Papua for the commencement of our nation-state sovereignty. Instead, we were sold to the highest bidders — Indonesia and the American mining company Freeport McMoRan.”

The problem with international diplomacy was that the UN was “beholden to the G20’s vested interests” and its formal meeting place in New York, Bomanak claimed.

“Why remain inside the belly of the beast?” he asked other indigenous peoples.

“Upon liberation of our ancestral motherland, and upon the agreement of the new government of West Papua, I would like to offer all colonised tribes and nations of the conquering empires — all indigenous peoples — the opportunity to manage our international affairs with absolute justice and accountability.

“International relations with indigenous governance for indigenous people. We will build the United Indigenous Nations in West Papua.”

• Read more at OPM

Vanuatu is in celebration mode after winning a significant battle on the world stage over climate change.

In a United Nations resolution spearheaded by Vanuatu, the world’s top court will now advise on countries’ legal obligations to fight climate change.

It also means the International Court of Justice can advise on consequences for those countries which do not comply. The resolution was passed overnight on Wednesday.

• READ MORE: UN adopts Vanuatu-led resolution in ‘epic win’ on climate change
• Other Vanuatu climate reports

Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau was ecstatic. He was in New York for the vote.

He called it a “historic resolution” and the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate co-operation.

“I celebrate today with the people of Vanuatu who are still reeling from the devastation from two back-to-back cyclones this month caused by the fossil fuels and greenhouse emissions that they are not responsible for,” he said.

His country is still picking up the pieces from Cyclone Judy and Cyclone Kevin, which struck within a couple of days of each other earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has been in Vanuatu looking at what support New Zealand can give — and ensuring help gets to those who need it.

She has witnessed first-hand the climate challenge that the people are facing. Mahuta said New Zealand had supported Vanuatu’s drive to get the UN resolution across the line.

NZ’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta . . . “”We have to acknowledge Vanuatu’s leadership.” Video: 1News

“We have to acknowledge Vanuatu’s leadership,” Mahuta told 1News.

“It’s not really the size of the country, but it’s the size of the vision, and Vanuatu’s voice has clearly put front row centre an aspiration to have the ICJ recognise the impacts of climate change on vulnerable countries.”

Accompanying New Zealand’s delegation is a 10-member Pasifika Medical Association PACMAT team. They will be based at the Aotearoa-funded Mindcare Mental Health facility for the next 28 days helping those traumatised by the two cyclones.

New Zealand has announced $12 million to add to a funding pool for the region to help people get back on their feet quicker after the disaster.

In Vanuatu, New Zealand is offering $18.5 million for a clean drinking water project, $4 million for tourism recovery and $3 million for general budget support.

Barbara Dreaver is 1News Pacific correspondent. Republished with permission.

The humanitarian aid worker Andrew Bagshaw, who has dual New Zealand and British citizenship, has been missing in Ukraine for more than 10 days.

Bagshaw and his British colleague Christopher Parry worked as part of a team of Ukrainian and international volunteers delivering aid and carrying out evacuations of civilians, often under fire from Russian forces.

They have not been seen since January 6, when they left the city of Kramatorsk for Soledar, in eastern Ukraine, which has since been claimed by the Russian mercenary company Wagner.

• READ MORE: Ukraine: abduction of UK aid workers raises safety questions over humanitarian organisations
• Other Ukraine war reports

Humanitarian volunteers often represent the best of us. They are driven to put themselves at personal risk with little financial reward to reduce human suffering and the impacts of conflicts.

Their ethical justifications for entering dangerous locations, despite clear warnings from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to travel to Ukraine, are often exemplary.

But aid workers are at high risk. During the past two decades, intentional attacks on aid or humanitarian workers have become a disturbing trend, often perpetrated to drive outside influences away from war zones and fully isolate populations.

Ukraine conflict: Fellow aid worker keeps faith Andrew Bagshaw will be found alive https://t.co/2xOm1wInxC

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) January 12, 2023

It is a war crime to intentionally attack aid workers. Some, such as personnel working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations, have considerably more rights than others.

Despite this division, all aid workers are covered by basic rules. The problem is that international humanitarian law is not based on the ethics of why someone is in a war zone. This is especially the case if they are foreigners.

Rights of foreigners who enter war zones
There are three main groups of foreigners who voluntarily go into war zones.

1. Some people volunteer to fight in foreign wars and are paid more than local fighters. If captured and deemed mercenaries, these people have no rights. They can be executed.
2. The second group are “aliens”, inadvertently caught up in a conflict in a country that is not theirs. For these people, if captured and non-combatants, they have a prima-facie right to leave the country. However, this is not an absolute right — they can still be held if their departure is contrary to the national interests of the state that captured them.
3. Aid workers represent the third group, and they are at increasing risk. Capturing aid workers for hostage and propaganda purposes is a repugnant trend. In recent conflicts, we’ve also seen a rise in the number of victims of collateral violence — their deaths were not intended but a result of indiscriminate force now commonly used in war zones.

More often that not, attacks on aid workers are a combination of intentional and unintentional actions.

Globally, at least 460 aid workers were victims of major attacks in 2021: 140 were were killed, 203 wounded and 117 kidnapped.

Most of these attacks happened in countries such as South Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria and Ethiopia. But other conflict zones are also contributing to the figures, with growing numbers of deaths, kidnappings and wounding of aid workers recorded in Ukraine in 2022.

International humanitarian law is clear that if a country where a war is happening consents to the presence of aid workers and they are impartial in their work, they “shall be respected and protected”.

Although Russia has withdrawn its consent to the specific convention that contains this rule, Ukraine is a signatory. The obvious problem is that Russia now considers this annexed territory to be Russian, not Ukrainian.

Irrespective of debates about ownership and consent, Russia is still bound by other rules. Russia, like Ukraine, is a party to the Hostages Convention, which prohibits and criminalises the taking of hostages, for whatever justification.

Russia is also bound by the Security Council resolution, in which it strongly condemned all forms of violence against humanitarian workers. The council, including Russia, then urged states to ensure crimes against such personnel do not go unpunished.

Between theory and practice on the battlefield
Despite all of these rules and obligations, there is a large gap between the theory of restraint and the practices developing in Ukraine.

It is possible that Bagshaw and other humanitarian workers have been directly caught up in the violence in Ukraine. To be operating in a war zone, which involves the indiscriminate use of force, Somme-like conditions, the possibility of war crimes and the arrival of thousands of mercenaries who often pay scant regard to rules, is extremely risky.

It is also possible they have been taken for bargaining purposes. A practice is developing in Ukraine in which combatants and non-combatants, including foreigners, are taken and traded by the belligerents.

These exchanges also include the bodies of the dead.

Whichever scenario applies, this is a tragedy. We are at a point where individuals with the highest ethical motivations to provide impartial humanitarian assistance have themselves become victims: collateral in a war being conducted without honour.

Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark is supporting aid agencies’ decision to halt operations in Afghanistan, and a UN official has urged the Taliban to reverse its ban on women humanitarian workers.

The country’s Taliban administration on Saturday ordered all local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) not to let female staff work until further notice.

It said the move, which was condemned globally, was justified because some women had not adhered to the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic dress code for women.

• READ MORE: UN to Taliban: ‘Vital’ to reverse ban on women in NGOs

The news led to the beginning of a withdrawal by organisations such as the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, and Unicef.

Clark, who also used to head the UN Development Programme, said the aid agencies were forced to suspend their services or yield to an oppressive policy.

She condemned Afghanistan’s banning of female humanitarian workers.

“It’s a huge violation of human rights of women. Where do you draw the line? If the organisations simply capitulated to this edict from the Taliban, they would be seen to be going along with a huge violation of women’s rights,” she said.

“So it is important that big organisations are speaking out now as they have, and are saying they will suspend their operations while this policy holds.

“The problem is the Taliban and these horrible hostile decisions that they’re taking towards women.”

Clark said the Taliban had tried to present itself as more legitimate than the last time it ruled Afghanistan, but a leopard did not change its spots.

She expected the Taliban leadership would face strong ongoing pressure from the UN and other entities, and they would see the consequences of foreign aid groups withdrawing.

UN calls for Taliban to reverse the decision
A senior UN official has urged Afghanistan’s Taliban administration to reverse the ban on female humanitarian workers, and charities fear it will worsen winter hardships.

“Millions of Afghans need humanitarian assistance and removing barriers is vital,” UNAMA said in the statement, adding that its acting head and humanitarian coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov had met with Economy Minister Mohammad Hanif.

The directives barring women from working at NGOs came from Hanif’s ministry.

The orders did not apply directly to the United Nations, but many of its programmes were carried out by NGOs subject to the order.

Four major global NGOs, whose humanitarian efforts had reached millions of Afghans, announced they were suspending operations on Sunday. Other smaller NGOs had also announced suspensions, including UK-based Islamic Relief Worldwide.

The NGOs said they were unable to run their programmes without female staff.

More than half of Afghanistan’s population relied on humanitarian aid, according to aid agencies. Basic aid was more critical during the mountainous nation’s harsh winter.

Two spokesmen for the Taliban administration did not respond to queries on the suspension of humanitarian programmes.

NGOs were also a critical source of employment for tens of thousands of Afghans, particularly women, as the local economy had collapsed following the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces and the Taliban takeover last year.

One such employee, a 27-year-old female aid worker in western Afghanistan who asked for her identity to be concealed because she feared retribution, said that her NGO had shut its office on Saturday and she could not go to work.

The NGO, funded by a Western country, worked with women in the agriculture sector, helping them set up sustainable incomes.

She said she was worried that losing her job would have a huge impact on her family because she was a single woman and the sole breadwinner.

Her father was dead and her mother was a housewife, she said, adding that she supported four sisters, three of whom were university students who could not complete their degrees since the Taliban administration barred women from attending university last week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

A new initiative has been launched in 15 Pacific Island countries to improve educational standards.

The Pacific Regional Inclusive Education Review was launched last week with each country having their own national surveys with the assistance of community groups, NGOs and stakeholders.

It has has been signed by Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific education reports

The Pacific Disability Forum comprises one of the many networks used to complete the survey, and it has roots in 21 countries.

Its main objective is to ensure children, including those living with disabilities, access quality learning.

The Forum’s CEO, Setareki Macanawai, said the review allowed for an understanding of the current issues within education across the region.

“[The purpose is] to have a shared understanding, and I think this is what this review has done. It has provided a lens-key, a good starting point. A good starting point condition for us in the Pacific to then develop a shared understanding of what inclusive education should look like for us in the Pacific.”

Making education accessible
Macanawai also said it was hard to make education accessible in the region due to various pre-conditions.

“There is a lot of stigma, there is a lot of discrimination broadly and generally across the Pacific in the different cultures and societies which is a pre-condition that makes it hard to create an inclusive education for all, particularly those with impairments,” he said.

The review is conducted by UNICEF Pacific and the Pacific Regional Inclusive Education Taskforce.

UNICEF Pacific’s Chief of Education Programme Anna Smeby said the biggest challenge to inclusive education in the Pacific is limited access or children living in poor housing.

“We know that challenges can be in physical access, teaching approaches and availability of extra support, and it can be in the inclusiveness of the environment which means the infrastructure, but also social and emotionally whether it is a welcoming environment,” she said.

“Improving policy for inclusive education, building and strengthening to adapt and differentiate instruction, the resource in classroom so that they have the resources they need and improving school infrastructure, bringing inclusive education leaves us to learn from each other both the shared challenges and the promising practices.

Vulnerable groups
“Vulnerable groups include learners with a disability or some sort of impairment, commonly students in remote places who do not have access to full-cycle schooling and students who have missed earlier learning but also gifted and talented students that need additional support in different ways,” Smeby said.

The collaboration between the 15 countries, regional partners, and the Pacific Inclusive Education Taskforce, supports Sustainable Development Goal 4 to achieve quality education for all and to build a pathway for all children to a productive and healthy adulthood.

UNICEF Pacific’s Deputy Representative Roshni Basu said countries needed to include the review’s recommendations into its policies urgently.

“UNICEF is committed to ensure that all children of our Pacific shores are able to enjoy their right to inclusive, and of course quality, education.

I urge all countries to maximise effort and commitment to translate the review findings into concrete investments for inclusive education.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is warning in a new report that mass killings of civilians could occur in Indonesia’s troubled West Papua region in the next year to 18 months if current conditions deteriorate to a worst-case scenario.

Although large-scale violence against civilians is not occurring yet in Papua, early warning signs are visible and warrant attention, says the report, titled “Don’t Abandon Us: Preventing Mass Atrocities in Papua.”

The museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide published the 45-page report this week authored by an Indonesian, Made Supriatma, who conducted field research in the region.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua human rights reports

“Indonesia ranks 27th on the list of countries with risks of mass atrocities. This report should be considered as an early warning,” Supriatma said.

A combination of factors — increasing rebel attacks, better coordination and organisation of pro-independence civilian groups, and the ease of communication — makes it plausible that the unrest could reach a new level in the next 12-18 months, the report said.

“If political and social unrest persist, and if it were to spread across the region, it is possible that the Indonesian government could determine that the scale or persistence of the protests would justify a more severe response, which could lead to large-scale killing of civilians,” it said.

The risks are rooted in factors such as past mass atrocities in Indonesia, the exclusion of indigenous Papuans from political decision-making, Jakarta’s failure to address their grievances and conflicts over the exploitation of the region’s resources, according to the report.

Human rights abuses
Other factors include Papuans’ resentment over Jakarta’s failure to hold accountable security personnel implicated in human rights abuses and conflict between indigenous Papuans and migrants from other parts of Indonesia over economic, political, religious, and ideological issues, it said.

Under one scenario that the report envisions, pro-Jakarta Papuan militia, backed by the military and police, commit mass atrocities against pro-independence Papuans.

But such a scenario depends on indigenous Papuan groups remaining divided into pro-Jakarta and pro-independence groups, it said. The other scenario involves Indonesian migrants and Indonesian security forces committing atrocities against indigenous Papuans, the study said.

The report recommends that the government improve freedom of information and monitoring atrocity risks, manage conflicts through nonviolent means, and address local grievances and drivers of conflict.

Supriatma said indigenous Papuans he spoke to as part of his research confirmed that real and perceived discrimination had fueled an “us-against-them” mentality between indigenous Papuans and Indonesians.

Papua, on the western side of New Guinea Island, has been the scene of a low-level pro-independence insurgency since the mainly Melanesian region was incorporated into Indonesia in a United Nations-administered ballot in the late 1960s.

In 1963, Indonesian forces invaded Papua — like Indonesia, a former Dutch colony — and annexed the region.

Only 1025 people voted in the UN-sponsored referendum in 1969 that locals and activists said was a sham, but the United Nations accepted the result, essentially endorsing Jakarta’s rule.

‘Not based on facts’
An expert at the Indonesian presidential staff office, Theofransus Litaay, questioned the study’s validity.

“There’s something wrong in the identification of research questions. The author extrapolated events in East Timor to his research,” he said, referring to violence by pro-Jakarta militias before and after East Timor’s vote for independence from Indonesia in 1999.

“It’s not based on the facts on the ground,” he said, without elaborating.

Gabriel Lele, a senior researcher with the Papuan Task Force at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, said the report was based on limited data.

“It is true that there has been an escalation of violence, but the main perpetrators are the OPM [Free Papua Movement] and the victims have been civilians, soldiers and police,” lele said.

He said rebels had also attacked indigenous Papuans who did not support the pro-independence movement.

Violence has intensified in Papua since 2018, when pro-independence rebels attacked workers who were building roads and bridges in Nduga regency, killing 20 people, including an Indonesian soldier.

Suspected rebels killed civilians
In the latest violence, suspected rebels gunned down 10 civilians, mostly non-indigenous Papuans, and wounded two others on July 16.

A local rebel commander from the OPM’s armed wing, Egianus Kogoya, claimed responsibility.

“We suspect they were spies, so we shot them dead on the spot,” the Media Indonesia newspaper quoted him as saying on Monday.

The attack in Nduga regency came a little more than two weeks after legislators voted to create three new provinces in Papua amid opposition from indigenous people and rebel groups.

In March this year, insurgents killed eight workers who were repairing a telecommunications tower in Beoga, a district of Puncak regency.

No desire to address racism
Reverend Dr Benny Giay, a member of the Papua Church Council, said Jakarta had not shown a desire to address racism against Papuans, who are ethnically Melanesian, and instead branded pro-independence groups terrorists.

“Authorities allow arms trade between armed groups and members of the TNI [military] and police, which perpetuates the violence and in the end can have fatal consequences for the indigenous people,” Dr Giay said.

The influx of migrants from other parts of Indonesia has created inter-communal tensions and conflicts over regional governance, analysts said.

Indigenous people are concerned that a massive project to build a trans-Papua highway, as part of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s drive to boost infrastructure, could lead to economic domination by outsiders and the presence of more troops, said Cahyo Pamungkas, a researcher from the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN).

“The road will mainly benefit non-Papuans, and indigenous people will benefit little economically because they are not ready to be involved in the economic system that the government wants to build,” Cahyo said.

Republished from Benar News. Co-author Victor Mambor is editor-in-chief of the indigenous Papuan newspaper and website Jubi.

In a deeply Catholic country, accusations that an American priest abused dozens of children at an orphanage stunned many in East Timor.

So when independent journalist Raimundos Oki heard that a group of girls planned to sue authorities, claiming they had been subjected to unnecessary virginity tests as part of the criminal case, he knew he had to hear their story.

Oki published interviews with the girls on his news website, Oekusi Post, ahead of the trial of Richard Daschbach. The then 84-year-old American priest was jailed in December for 12 years for child abuse.

• READ MORE: Other reports about journalist Raimundos Oki
• Other reports on the Richard Daschbach case

But now Oki is under investigation himself, on accusations that he breached judicial secrecy.

The case is unexpected in East Timor. Also known as Timor-Leste, the country has one of the better records globally for press freedom.

Groups including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Human Rights Watch, however, note that the risk of legal proceedings and a media law with vague provisions that journalists “promote public interest and democratic order” could encourage self-censorship on some subjects, including accusations of abuse in the Catholic Church.

Call from police
Oki learned that he was under investigation when police called on June 29, ordering the journalist to report to a police station in Dili, the capital, the following day.

At the station, police informed Oki that the public prosecutor’s office had ordered an investigation into the journalist for allegedly “violating the secrets of the legal system.”

The investigation is connected to the reports Oki published in 2020 about a planned lawsuit against authorities. In it, the claimants alleged authorities subjected them to virginity tests while investigating claims of abuse against the priest.

In their lawsuit and in interviews with Oki, the claimants said they had told authorities they were not among the minors abused by the priest, but that authorities still forced them to undergo the invasive procedure.

“They wanted to share what they went through with the public,” Oki said. “As a journalist, it is my duty to share their stories with the world.”

At the time that his articles were published, the priest was still on trial. Oki said a police officer told him the judicial secrecy accusation was linked to Daschbach’s trial.

Authorities have not responded publicly to the lawsuit, which was filed in July 2021.

The public prosecutor’s office in Dili didn’t respond to VOA’s request for comment.

If convicted, Oki could face up to six years in prison.

‘Public interest’
Both the journalist and his lawyer, Miguel Faria — who also defended Daschbach in his trial — deny that Oki breached judicial secrecy, citing public interest as a justification for publishing the interviews.

“Cases of forced virginity tests are considered public interest, and it is very important for the public to know what happened to these victims,” Faria said.

The lawyer said that in this case, “the victims speak firsthand about their experiences”.

Judicial secrecy laws are often enforced to ensure the right to a fair trial or to prevent the risk of a jury being influenced by reporting. UNICEF and others also have guidelines for coverage of child abuse and trials to prevent minors being identified or retraumatised.

Rick Edmonds, a media analyst at the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said that in some countries, interviewing witnesses during or even shortly before a trial takes place can jeopardise the trial or provide grounds for appeal if the jury was not entirely sequestered.

Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific director at RSF, said that prosecutors should consider some legal arguments, including that the girls’ testimonies were published during Daschbach’s trial.

But, he said, “from a press freedom point of view, we need to look at the bigger picture on this issue and think about the public interest.

“I think the very key in this case is the idea of public interest. In a functional democracy, there can be some debate between the necessity of judicial secrecy and the need for the public to know exactly what is at stake,” Bastard told VOA.

Showing the suffering
Oki said his objective was to show the suffering the girls went through. At the time, he said, the media focus was the trial of the priest and not the experiences of minors, who say they went through unnecessary procedures while the case was investigated.

“Forced virginity test is a violation of basic human rights,” he said. “This practice is against every international norm of human rights.”

The reporter said authorities didn’t need to carry out such tests to build a case against the former priest.

The United Nations has called for so-called virginity tests to be banned, saying the procedure is both unscientific and “a violation of human rights.”

Parker Novak, a Washington-based expert on East Timor, believes Oki’s case is controversial because it touches on the role of the church in the Timorese society.

“There is a reluctance in the Timorese media, in the Timorese society, to report critically on influential institutions and leaders,” he told VOA.

The Catholic Church is arguably the most influential institution in the Timorese society, he said.

“So certainly, any reporting that can be perceived as critical of the church, even if that reporting is wholly justified, whereas this case probably was, it’s still seen as taboo within the Timorese society, and that’s what causes controversy,” Novak added.

Closed trial
East Timor is said to contain the highest percentage of Catholics outside Vatican City, and the priest, Daschbach, was a revered figure in the community who had the support of former President Xanana Gusmao, who attended the sentencing.

The Associated Press reported that Daschbach’s trial was closed to the public and that some witnesses complained of being threatened.

A US federal grand jury in Washington later indicted the priest for illicit sexual contact in a foreign place and wire fraud.

Oki has faced legal action previously for his reporting. In 2017, the journalist was accused of criminal defamation over a 2015 article published in the Timor Post about then-Prime Minister Rui Maria de Araujo.

Charges in that case were later dropped, but Oki believes the case against him this time is more complicated.

“If they want to politicise it, then I believe they will imprison me,” Oki said.

“However, if they look at the story, which was published last year along with several videos, they will see that there is no wrongdoing.”

This week’s White House meeting between NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and US President Joe Biden reflected a world undergoing rapid change. But of all the shared challenges discussed, there was one that kept appearing in the leaders’ joint statement — China in the Pacific.

Tucked within the statement, with all its promises of increased co-operation and partnership, was this not-so-subtle declaration:

In particular, the United States and New Zealand share a concern that the establishment of a persistent military presence in the Pacific by a state that does not share our values or security interests would fundamentally alter the strategic balance of the region and pose national-security concerns to both our countries.

Unsurprisingly, this upset Chinese officials, with a foreign ministry spokesperson accusing Ardern and Biden of trying to “deliberately hype up” the issue.

• READ MORE: Amplifying narratives about the ‘China threat’ in the Pacific may help China achieve its broader aims
• New Zealand has just joined an overtly anti-China alliance – are the economic risks worth it?
• Saying China ‘bought’ a military base in the Solomons is simplistic and shows how little Australia understands power in the Pacific

But hopefully the statement will also prompt New Zealand to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to increasing assistance in the Pacific region. Expressing “concern” about China’s influence means little otherwise.

Aid and influence

While New Zealand and Australia are responsible for around 55 percent of all of the aid flowing into the region, that contribution needs to be seen in perspective.

There are two obvious shortcomings. First, more needs to be done to promote democracy in the Pacific, which means supporting anti-corruption initiatives and a free press. Second, both countries simply need to give more.

Neither spends anywhere near the 0.7 percent of gross national income on development assistance recommended by the United Nations (UN).

The high-tide mark for both was long ago: 0.52 percent for New Zealand in 1975 and 0.48 percent for Australia in 1967. Today, New Zealand spends 0.26 percent and Australia 0.21 percent of their incomes on overseas aid.

It is against this backdrop of under-spending that China has come to be seen as an attractive alternative to the traditional regional powers. It has no colonial baggage in the Pacific and is a developing country itself, having made impressive leaps in development and poverty reduction.

Pacific Islanders snub China by rejecting security pact https://t.co/Mv217iuSx2

— FT China (@ftchina) May 30, 2022

Debt and distress
Many of the small developing island states in the Pacific share common challenges and vulnerabilities: negative migration patterns, risk from climate change and fragile economies.

Three states in the region (Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu) are in the UN’s “least developed countries” category. Two others (Samoa and Vanuatu) are just above the threshold. Most are at high risk of debt distress, increasing the risk of poor policy decisions simply to pay bills.

The average debt-to-GDP ratio for Pacific states has risen from 32.9 percent in 2019 to 42.2 percent in 2021. Vanuatu, Palau and Fiji have debt-to-GDP ratios greater than 70 percent.

China currently accounts for only about 6 percent of all aid in the region, but supplements this with grants and loans, some commercial and some interest-free. These overlap with grand infrastructure plans such as the Belt and Road Initiative aimed at connecting many regions of the world.

While it might not have secured its desired regional multilateral trade and security agreement with Pacific nations, China is clearly in the Pacific for the long haul.

Working with China
This presence need not be seen entirely negatively. In the right circumstances, Chinese assistance can have a positive impact on economic and social outcomes in recipient countries, according to the International Monetary Fund. (The same study also found a negative but negligible effect on governance.)

Overall, Chinese influence in the Pacific is not necessarily something that must be “countered”. For the good of the region, countries should seek ways to work together, especially given that aid to the Pacific is often fragmented, volatile, unpredictable and opaque.

Co-ordinated, efficient and effective partnerships between donors, recipients and regional institutions will be vital, and co-operation with China could be part of this.

New Zealand and Australia need to expand their work on the vast infrastructure and development needs of the Pacific. Transparency should be a priority with all projects and spending, and co-operation should be tied to shared benchmarks such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

For its part, China should give more aid rather than loans (especially to the least developed countries) to avoid the risk of poor countries becoming beholden to lenders or even bankrupted.

Chinese Ambassador’s warning to NZ: Getting into ‘exclusive circles’ could lead to ‘unmitigated disasters’ https://t.co/tjK9a2jCg4

— Newshub Politics (@NewshubPolitics) June 1, 2022

Peace and security
Above all, peace and security between and within countries should be an agreed fundamental principle. The good news is that South Pacific nations have already taken steps towards this by agreeing to the Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.

This could be complemented by an agreement banning foreign military bases in the region to maintain its independence. If needed, peacekeeping or outside security assistance should be multilateral through the UN, not bilateral through secret arrangements.

Co-operation for the good of the Pacific should be the goal, but this is only possible if the region is not militarised.

Chinese influence and power in the Pacific is a reality that cannot be wished away or easily undermined. With the US similarly determined to assert itself, the stakes are rising.

All nations should work together to ensure no small, independent Pacific country becomes a pawn in what could be a very dangerous game.

Dr Alexander Gillespie, professor of law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

With the Australian general election largely done and dusted, and with a clear (if still-to-be-quantified) mandate, Anthony Albanese faces greater and more immediate international challenges than any Australian Prime Minister since the Cold War began.

Between climate change and an increasingly truculent — not to say belligerent — China, Pacific island countries are searching for reassurance, safety and support. Reassurance that we are valued and respected, and that a rules based order has the same rules for everyone else as it has for us.

Safety, from the increasingly violent buffeting of climate change, and from the risk of losing our balance in the increasingly straitened geopolitical space we occupy. And support for our own self-determination, territorial integrity and survival.

• READ MORE: Other Village Explainer reports at Asia Pacific Report
• Other Australian election reports

Each if these will have significant impacts on the Albanese government’s domestic policies.

Each will have lasting impact on the Pacific islands region.

Let’s hope they’ve got a plan in place. They do not have the luxury of time.

Part of this fight will have to happen while they’re still strapping on the gloves. We’ve already looked at some of the challenges Penny Wong is likely to face when she (almost certainly) becomes Foreign Minister.

In this issue, we’ll enumerate some of the immediate challenges faced by Wong and her cabinet colleagues.

PIF Secretariat in shambles
The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat is in a shambles right now, in no small part because of Australia’s call for a vote during the selection of its most recent Secretary-General, rather than enduring more painstaking but traditional method of consensus-building our leaders learned in the village meeting house.

The voting split the membership, and the Micronesian contingent still have not reconciled themselves completely.

There is little Australia can do to fix that. But they can offer unconditional support to the body itself, and for the idea it embodies. They can formally uphold the Boe Declaration, which lists climate change as the single greatest security threat faced by the Pacific islands region, by re-basing (sorry) their security stance on this premise.

They can fund and support the Blue Pacific strategy. They can fund the Secretariat’s climate indemnity scheme. They can show our reluctant leaders that the PIF is worth being part of.

More importantly, they can promote our voices in Washington and at the UN. Our plight on the world stage resembles the challenges women have faced since… forever. Ignored, subverted, explained to, denied agency over our own body politic. We don’t need people to speak for us. We need people to listen when we speak for ourselves.

Endorsement and sponsorship for voices like those of our esteemed Pacific Elders would go a long way to achieving that.

Even more ambitiously: Is a Pacific COP possible? I’d be pleasantly surprised if this Labor government proved willing to spend the time and effort reaching a landmark such as this.

Immense time, resources needed
The time and resources required would be immense, and would compete with dozens of looming challenges in the foreign relations/defence space.

Despite the massive victory it could bring, the opportunity costs are immense. If a COP were achieved, it would build a legacy that could be relied on for years to come, but as we’ve stated before, all this would have to be achieved with a lethargic, hidebound DFAT bureaucracy.

It’s sadly much easier to imagine Australia lurching from crisis to crisis, as it has for decades.

In terms of bilateral relations, the stakes are even higher. It is clear now that China intends to build on its perceived momentum in the Pacific, and to test Labor’s mettle from the very start.

Wang Yi’s tour of four (or five?) Pacific island nations is only days away. His diplomats have been working hard to replicate the success they achieved with Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare, who signed an unprecedented security agreement that would allow personnel to be stationed in-country and ships to visit and re-victual.

It doesn’t appear that Wang will get what he wants. The pressure is on in Kiribati, but the government there has paid a hefty political price for its whole-throated support of China.

Since 2020, it’s been feeling much more phlegmatic than it was in the past.

Chinese base in Kiribati a worry
Good thing, too. A Chinese base in Kiribati is one that even I worry about. Having AA/AD capabilities just a hop, skip and a jump from Honolulu would force a fundamental re-evaluation of the US Navy’s Pacific stance.

I’ve pooh-poohed talk of bases in Vanuatu and Solomon Islands in the past. I worry about Kiribati.

Vanuatu, at least, has managed to keep dancing on the head of an increasingly pointy pin. Resisting pressure at the highest level to include an overt security component in Wang Yi’s gift bag, it has instead signed on to a massive upgrade for its Luganville airport, which will allow wide-body aircraft to fly there directly from Asia.

The island of Espiritu Santo has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. An upgrade to its international airport is part of Vanuatu’s 2018 tourism development strategy.

Yes, it’s undeniably true that any airport that can handle an A330 NEO can also handle a C17 or a Xi’an Y-20. But Vanuatu has — for the moment, at least — avoided explicitly allowing any such flights, except possibly for humanitarian reasons.

Vanuatu’s example is illuminating. They appear to have translated a high-stakes geopolitical gambit into an economic development gain that fits the country’s plans, and which will provide a massive economic boost to its moribund tourist industry.

But they are faced with increased stridency from all sides, and if they lose the space to manoeuvre, either through rising geopolitical tensions or because climate change pushes us past the point of resilience, then we will be more at risk ourselves, and more of a risk to our neighbours.

A precarious truth in the Pacific
This precarious truth applies even more so in Solomon Islands, in PNG, in Fiji … in fact everywhere in the region. Security begins with stability and predictability. We need to know we’ll be around in a generation’s time before we make any other promises.

And we need to know that Australia’s promises will be kept this time, rather than sacrificed at the altar of domestic politics, as they have under every Liberal and Labor government since the millennium began.

Can Penny Wong unilaterally undo these all tensions? No. But she can fight for a foreign policy that changes Australia’s trajectory, rather than one that attempts to change ours.

Rather than trying to align us to Australia, she can fight to align Australia to confront our common existential threats, to listen to how we expect to address them, and then to be a proper friend, and act on our words.

The Village Explainer by Dan McGarry is a semi-regular newsletter containing analysis and insight focusing on under-reported aspects of Pacific societies, politics and economics. Republished with permission.

Fiji is making a mockery of its stand in the United Nations in condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine by allowing the Russian super yacht Amadea to berth in the western port of Lautoka, says opposition People’s Alliance party leader Sitiveni Rabuka.

He called on government to send it on its way immediately.

He made the comment as police are investigating why the Amadea had entered and stopped inside Fiji’s territorial waters before a clearance from Customs was issued.

• READ MORE: Fiji investigates arrival of Russian oligarch’s vessel, questions captain
• ‘We don’t do Russians’, says Fiji health minister
• Other Ukraine war reports

Police Commissioner Brigadier General Sitiveni Qiliho said the super yacht was being investigated for alleged breach of Fiji’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

The super yacht belonging to a Russian billionaire sanctioned by the USA, United Kingdom and Europe came into port at Lautoka on Tuesday.

Public sources say the Amadea is owned by Suleiman Kerimov, a Russian oligarch who is currently sanctioned over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Marine Traffic, a marine analytics service, started showing Amadea in Fiji waters from daytime on Tuesday and by 6pm it was headed to the Lautoka Wharf.

Left Mexico last month
The Amadea left Manzanillo port in Mexico on March 24.

The 106-metre yacht risks being seized by the US, UK or any European Union country after they placed sanctions on Kerimov’s assets.

According to Fiji port requirements, any yacht arriving into Fiji must obtain approval from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Trade and Transport and the Immigration Department.

“We have heard about it [Amadea] but nothing has come to Immigration,” said Immigration Secretary Yogesh Karan.

Questions sent to the Ministry of Health had not been answered on publication by The Fiji Times.

Anish Chand is the Fiji Times West Bureau chief reporter. Republished with permission.

Deeper and and more rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to limit the worst effects of global warming, a climate scientist has warned.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report that global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Without shrinking energy demand, reducing emissions rapidly by the end of this decade to keep warming below 1.5C will be almost impossible, the key UN body’s report said.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘If we don’t achieve deep and rapid reductions during this decade… then limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach’ – IPCC vice chair Dr Andy Reisinger
• ‘We are one of the highest emitting countries in the world – James Shaw
• ‘It’s a huge challenge and we’ve got to do it so quickly’ – Professor Ralph Sims
• ‘The window is almost closed … we need to take action immediately’- Professor James Renwick
• READ MORE: Climate change: IPCC scientists say it’s ‘now or never’ to limit warming

Even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century.

At this point, only severe emissions cuts in this decade across all sectors, from agriculture and transport to energy and buildings, can turn things around, the report said.

IPCC vice-chair Dr Andy Reisinger told RNZ Morning Report the world was “pretty much out of time” to limit warming to 1.5C as agreed in Paris in 2015 and subsequently.

“What our report shows is that the emissions over the last decade were at the highest level ever in human history.

“But on the positive side, that level of emissions growth has slowed and globally we’ve seen a revolution in prices for some renewable energy technologies.” That had led to a rapid uptake of solar and wind energy technologies, he said.

“Also policies have grown. About half of global greenhouse gas emissions that we looked at in our report are now covered by some sort of laws that address climate change.”

The report said the world would need “carbon dioxide removal” (CDR) technologies – ranging from planting trees that soak up carbon to grow, to costly and energy-intensive technologies to suck carbon dioxide directly from the air.

Governments had historically seen these technologies as a “cop out” but they were needed alongside reducing emissions,” Reisinger said.

“The time has now run out. If we don’t achieve deep and rapid reductions during this decade, much more so than we’re currently planning to collectively, then limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is out of reach.

“And the world collectively has the tools to reduce emissions by about a half by 2030.”

NZ has ‘squandered 30 years’, says Shaw
Climate Change Minister James Shaw says Aotearoa New Zealand has the political will to tackle climate change but it would have been a lot easier if it had begun decades ago.

“We are one of the highest emitting countries in the world on a per-capita basis and what that means is we’re now in a situation where having essentially fluffed around for three decades the cuts that we need to make over are now far steeper than they would have been.”

“Our country has squandered the past 30 years,” Shaw told Morning Report.

He said the Emissions Reduction Plan to be published next month would set out how the country would reduce emissions across every sector of the economy.

“I think what’s different about the plan that we’re putting out in May is that it’s a statutory instrument”, he said, and was required under the Zero Carbon Act. It would have targets to reduce emissions to the year 2025, 2030 and 2035.

Shaw said measures like the clean car discount scheme were working.

New Zealand’s agricultural emissions had not reduced, he said. This was the year when final decisions would be made on whether agriculture was brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme, and the whole sector was involved in the process.

There were farms up and down the country doing a terrific job on emissions but like every sector there was a “noisy group” which was dragging the chain.

“I think the charge that Groundswell are laying that we are not listening to farmers is ‘total bollocks’, he said.

Shaw noted the IPCC report said 83 percent of net growth in greenhouse gases since 2010 had occurred in Asia and the Pacific — and that New Zealand, Australia and Japan, as a group, had some of the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita in 2019.

Cut consumer demand
While past IPCC reports on mitigating carbon emissions tended to focus on the promise of sustainable fuel alternatives, the new report highlights a need to cut consumer demand.

Massey University emeritus professor Ralph Sims, a review editor of the IPCC report, said one of the overarching messages is that people needed to change behaviours.

Despite New Zealanders having an attitude that our impact was small, in fact the country had some of the highest carbon emissions per capita, he said.

“We need people to look at their lifestyles, look at their carbon footprints and consider how they may reduce them.”

One of the easiest for the individual was to avoid food waste, he said.

Sims was involved in the transport chapter and said it was a key area for New Zealand.

“It’s the highest growing sector, and makes up for 20 percent of the country’s emissions.”

Faster electric vehicles change
He did not believe the country was transitioning fast enough to electric vehicles, and government assistance needed to be ramped up.

Electric vehicle prices would also reduce over time and a second hand market would make them more affordable, he said.

Sims said New Zealand needed to “get out of coal” and some companies were already reducing their coal demand.

Though New Zealand’s coal industry was small, exploration was still on the table and just last year the Southland District Council granted exploration at Ohai, he said.

Methane emissions need to reduce by a third by 2030, which Sims said is “a major challenge, and highly unlikely” to be achieved in New Zealand.

Victoria University of Wellington professor of physical geography James Renwick said curbing greenhouse gas emissions was still possible, with immediate action.

“The advice from the Climate Change Commission does show that we can peak emissions in the next few years and reduce and get down to zero carbon dioxide hopefully well in advance of 2050,” he said.

“It’s impossible to overstate the dangerous threat we face from climate change and yet politicians and policy makers and businesses still don’t act when everything’s at stake. I haven’t really seen the political will yet but we really need to see action.”

Technologies available at present to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere were not able to operate at the scale needed to make a difference to the climate system, he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The West Papua National Liberation Army-Free Papua Organisation (TPNPB-OPM) has rejected peace talks with the Indonesian government if it is only mediated by the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM).

It is also asking President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to be prepared to sit down with them at the negotiating table.

TPNPB-OPM spokesperson Sebby Sambom said that the OPM wants the peaceful dialogue or negotiations to be mediated by the United Nations because the armed conflict in Papua was already on an international scale.

• READ MORE: How colonial puppeteer Indonesia uses ‘autonomy’ to disempower Papuans
• Other West Papuan conflict reports

“In principle we agree [that] if the negotiations are in accordance with UN mechanisms, but we are not interested in Indonesia’s methods,” said Sambom in a written statement.

Sambom said that they also do not want to hold the dialogue in Indonesia but want it to be held in a neutral country in accordance with UN mechanisms.

“The negotiations must be held in a neutral country, in accordance with UN mechanisms”, he said.

Sambom said President Widodo must be aware and must have the courage to sit down at the negotiating table with the TPNPB-OPM’s negotiating team.

He also reminded Widodo that the UN was an international institution which can act as a mediator in resolving armed conflicts.

Peaceful dialogue
“In the statement to Jakarta we are asking that Indonesian President Jokowi be aware and have the courage to sit at the negotiating table with the TPNPB-OPM’s negotiating team together with all the delegates from the organisations which are struggling [for independence],” he said.

Earlier, the Komnas HAM claimed it would initiate peace talks between the government and the OPM.

Komnas HAM had also claimed that the proposal for talks had been agreed to by the government, ranging from President Widodo, Coordinating Minister for Security, Politics and Legal Affairs Mahfud MD to the TNI (Indonesian military) and Polri (Indonesian police).

Komnas HAM, along with the Komnas HAM Papua representative office, began sounding out peaceful dialogue by meeting with a series of groups in Papua on March 16-23.

In the initial stage, Komnas HAM was endeavoring to hear and ask for the views of key parties on the issue, especially the OPM, both those within the country as well as those overseas. The other key people were religious, traditional community and intellectual figures.

Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was OPM Tolak Dialog Damai Ide Komnas HAM, Hanya Mau di PBB.

The United Nations says Indonesia must immediately drop charges and look into threats, intimidation and reprisals against human rights defender Veronica Koman and her family.

Veronica Koman, a human and minority rights lawyer, is in self-imposed exile in Australia.

However, she still faces several charges in Indonesia for alleged incitement, spreading fake news, displaying race-based hatred and disseminating information aimed at inflicting ethnic hatred.

• READ MORE: Other Veronica Koman reports

The charges were believed to have been brought against her in retaliation to her work advocating for human rights in West Papua.

Veronica Koman was among five other human rights defenders mentioned in the UN Secretary-General’s 2021 annual report on cooperation with the United Nations, its representatives and mechanisms in the field of human rights, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, said.

She has faced threats, harassment and intimidation for her reporting on West Papua and Papua provinces, for providing reports to UN human rights mechanisms, and for attending UN meetings, for which she was questioned by security forces.

“This case highlights how human rights defenders are often targeted for their cooperation with the United Nations, which is fundamental to their peaceful and legitimate work in the protection and promotion of human rights,” Lawlor said.

Explosive boxes thrown
Acts of intimidation and threats against Koman’s family have also been reported this year, most recently on November 7, when unidentified individuals threw two small explosive boxes inside the garage of her parents’ home in West Jakarta.

The boxes reportedly contained threatening messages, including one stating “we will scorch the earth of wherever you hide and of your protectors.”

Another box addressed to Koman, delivered to the home of a family member, contained a dead chicken and a message saying that anyone hiding her “will end up like this”.

“I am extremely concerned at the use of threats, intimidation and acts of reprisal against Veronica Koman and her family, which seek to undermine the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the legitimate work of human rights lawyers,” Lawlor said.

“I urge the Indonesian government to drop the charges against her and investigate the threats and acts of intimidation in a prompt an impartial manner and bring the perpetrators to justice,” Lawlor said.

“Impunity for violations against human rights defenders has a chilling effect on civil society as a whole.”

The Special Rapporteur will continue to monitor the case and is in contact with the Indonesian authorities on the matter.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The French government’s decision to press ahead with the third and final referendum vote for self-determination in Kanaky New Caledonia was “unjust and unfair” for the Indigenous Kanak people, says a coalition of nine pan-Pacific civil society groups.

The groups have also accused the French state of “colonial manoeuvring in the middle of a health crisis” to gain a “premeditated outcome”.

“This process has been unjust, culturally insensitive, disingenuous and falls completely short of the spirit of the Noumea Accord. This referendum is clearly null and void,” said a statement by the Pacific Civil Society Organisations (CSO).

• READ MORE: France’s New Caledonia policy labelled a ‘catastrophe’ by left leader
• New Caledonian referendum result rejected – not wish of ‘silent majority’
• New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but it’s a hollow victory that will only ratchet up tensions
• Why New Caledonia’s final independence vote could lead to instability and tarnish France’s image in the region
• Betrayal of Kanaky decolonisation by Paris risks return to dark days

“Despite numerous calls from state and non-state actors to postpone the referendum to 2022, the French government used its colonial manoeuvring in the middle of a health crisis — where almost half the population has tested positive for covid-19 — to arrive at a premeditated outcome.”

The statement said the referendum was not consultative and it did not serve the “common good of the Kanaky population, who exercised their right to not participate in the pseudo-referendum”.

“This non-participation of pro-independence indigenous people should have been a clear signal to France of the public mood, recognising that the poll results cannot be received as the genuine resolve of the Kanak people.

“Unfortunately, it appears that there is a blindspot in Paris, where the results of the referendum are being celebrated as the legitimate will of the Kanaky New Caledonia population – although over 103,480 or more than 56 percent of the registered did not participate in the vote.

Call for UN to ‘void’ referendum
“We join the Indigenous people of Kanaky and other pro-independence activists and organisations in the region, such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group, in calling for the United Nations to declare the outcome of the referendum null and void.

“We also call on the Pacific Islands Forum Ministerial Committee as observers to New Caledonia to ensure an independent, candid and just observation report of the referendum vote is made public.”

The civil society coalition statement is enorsed by the Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality, Fiji; Fiji Council of Social Services; Fiji Women’s Rights Movement; Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict–Pacific; Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance; Pacific Conference of Churches; Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG); Peace Movement Aotearoa; and Youngsolwara Pacific.

A late legal bid to postpone Sunday’s independence referendum in New Caledonia has reportedly failed.

A leading anti-independence leader and president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, Sonia Backes, said the highest French administrative court had rejected an urgent submission to defer the third and final independence referendum until next year.

The submission was filed by 146 voters and three organisations, arguing that campaigning has been hampered by the covid-19 pandemic.

• READ MORE: ‘Unthinkable’ referendum on New Caledonia independence challenged
• Emmanuel Macron’s dangerous shift on the New Caledonia referendum risks a return to violence
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia referendum reports

They said it was therefore “unthinkable” to proceed with such an important plebiscite.

In a post on social media, Backes said the vote would go ahead.

For weeks pro-independence parties have unsuccessfully lobbied Paris to delay the vote and they now say they will neither take part in the vote nor recognise its result.

France, which deems the pandemic to be under control, last week flew in almost 250 magistrates and judicial officials to oversee Sunday’s vote.

It also flew in about 2000 extra police, including riot squads, to provide security for the referendum.

A pro-independence delegation from New Caledonia has left for New York to raise its opposition to the referendum with the United Nations.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Malaita province in Solomon Islands is planning to poll people on self-determination.

It comes two weeks after a Malaitan-led protest against the national government in Honiara degenerated into a violent riot.

The Malaita Premier, Daniel Suidani, said he was seeking the help of the United Nations in the referendum, which he hoped to have completed by the end of January.

• READ MORE:  Solomon Islands political battle ends with Sogavare winning confidence vote
• Solomon Islands PM survives no-confidence vote after unrest
• Other Solomon Islands crisis reports

Suidani said the UN was involved in drawing up the Townsville Peace Agreement in 2000, which was an attempt to resolve prolonged ethnic violence on Guadalcanal.

He said nothing had come from that agreement’s commitment to self-determination.

“The issue of independence or maybe a referendum is quite important because we need to find out whether that idea is still in the minds of the people of Malaita. That is why I am announcing this referendum to be carried out as soon as possible,” he said.

Earlier this week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare defeated a motion of no confidence in him by 32 votes to 15 with two abstentions.

It was moved by opposition leader Matthew Wale after major political unrest in the capital last month saw three days of rioting, looting and burning of businesses and properties in Honiara.

Sogavare said he would defend the principles of democracy and the rule of law no matter the cost.

In his first public statement since the vote, Sogavare said the Solomon Islands was a democratic country with a democratically-elected government and he did not resign because that would only bring the wrong message to future generations.

Where is the legislation?
The government is also being criticised for only passing one new law this year.

Opposition MP and member for East ‘Are’are Peter Kenilorea Jr said the only law the government had passed in Parliament this year was an amendment to the Telecommunications Act.

He said the government could not use the covid-19 pandemic as an excuse for not doing its job.

“Just this year Fiji passed 34 Acts. They had community transmission. They worked,” he said.

“Papua New Guinea had 15, and 43 last year. We cannot just leave our jobs just because of covid-19. We don’t even have community transmission.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The United Nations has glaring problems in Samoa where the government is calling for the UN’s role in the country to be reviewed.

The most pressing immediate problem concerns the UN Resident Co-ordinator in Samoa, Simona Marinescu, and the local government’s allegation that she has interfered in domestic politics.

Samoa’s ruling Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party has accused Marinescu of breaching UN principles of neutrality by actively working against the party during this year’s election.

• READ MORE: More Samoan politics reports

The FAST claim partly relates to Marinescu’s involvement in the push to increase the number of women MPs in Samoa. The issue of a quota for women’s seats in Parliament became a central point of contention in the drawn out impasse between the former ruling Human Rights Protection Party and FAST over election the election in April, which was won by FAST.

Marinescu, a former politician in Romania who took up the Apia post in early 2018, is a vocal advocate of women’s rights.

However, by pushing the women MPs issue during the testy initial post-election stages, she was accused of having favoured HRPP and its leader, Samoa’s long-time prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielagaoi, who aimed to prevent Fiame Naomi Mata’afa becoming the country’s first woman prime minister.

After months of court action over the election outcome, as well as rallies by HRPP supporters which FAST has accused Marinescu of helping to instigate, Fiame is now installed as prime minister — and her government has the knives out for the UN representative.

Push for law change
FAST party chairman deputy prime minister La’auli Leuatea Schmidt has also questioned Marinescu’s role in a reported recommendation to legalise abortion in Samoa made as part of a submission by the UN country office for Samoa’s recent Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council.

La’auli said it was not Marinescu’s place to have pushed for changes to Samoa’s laws in the area of women’s rights, adding that she had crossed a line.

“She should not affiliate with our local domestic politics,” he said.

“That is our main concern, because we found out that she has been involved with our political affairs locally.”

The diplomat has been unavailable for RNZ Pacific’s requests to comment. Having attended COP26 in Glasgow, Marinescu remains out of the country, and it is uncertain if she is welcome to return to Samoa given the new government’s feelings.

Tuilaepa, now the opposition leader, came out in defence of Marinescu and called for an apology from La’auli whose attacks he described as “uncalled for”.

Sources close to the UN in Samoa described it as unlikely that Marinescu had sought to help HRPP win government over FAST, but said her interventions were ill-judged, badly timed and came across as high-handed.

Climate project under UN corruption probe
During Marinescu’s tenure in Samoa, a major climate change resilience project under the UN umbrella has gone awry with the emergence of corruption allegations.

The Vaisigano River Catchment Project, a US$65 million flood proofing project to fortify a main river in Samoa’s capital Apia from rising sea levels, was to be 90 percent funded by the UN’s Green Climate Fund.

But the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has been investigating allegations of corruption in the project since last year, and the project has stalled. In its preliminary form, the work proved insufficient to prevent significant damage from last December’s floods in Apia.

Furthermore, the Samoa Observer recently revealed that the UN’s Samoa office (a multi-country desk which also oversees the UN’s Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau programmes) was stripped of its authority to manage the Vaisigano Catchment and other development projects due to the concerns about its financial mismanagement.

The UN’s Bangkok office is now controlling expenditure over up to a dozen projects under the Samoa office, also including a US$52 million project for increasing the country’s production of renewable energy, and several projects in Niue and the Cooks.

Regarding the Vaisigano project, the UNDP said formal investigations were launched by its Office of Audit and Investigation, “appropriate follow-up actions have been initiated”, and the case had been referred to national authorities.

Mismanagement of major climate resilience projects is a concern for regional countries like New Zealand, which last month committed US$900 million over four years to support mainly Pacific countries on climate change efforts.

Climate partnership funding
NZ Climate Change Minister James Shaw said New Zealand’s work in climate funding was primarily geared toward working with partner countries directly, rather than through multi-lateral funds such as the Green Climate Fund.

“One of the reasons for that is when you’re working bilaterally, directly, you’ve got much better line of sight of the projects, and so that helps us to manage around any issues of corruption that might arise.”

Sources have told RNZ Pacific of their concern that there was a lack of checks and balances over the Vaisigano Catchment Project, as well as a lack of progress in the project generally since it was signed off in 2016.

Marinescu has not had direct oversight of UNDP projects since the role was de-linked from that of Resident Co-ordinator, and new UNDP Resident Representative Jorn Sorensen arrived in late 2019.

However, Samoa’s prime minister has said she was considering lodging a formal complaint about Marinescu’s behaviour in relation to alleged interference in local politics.

FAST party wins four byelections
The emerging problems in the UN Samoa relationship came as the country headed back to the polls last week for six byelections — four of them being won by the FAST party to boost their numbers in the House to 31.

The byelections were the result of post-election legal challenges, which led to HRPP election-winners for these electorates giving up their seats.

Meanwhile, Fiame’s government has called for a review of the UN role in Samoa.

La’auli has acknowledged the good work that the UN has done over many years in Samoa.

But he said the new issues that had arisen highlighted a need to revisit the relationship with the UN in the interests of protecting Samoa’s culture and Christian values.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Five Fijians who are based in Afghanistan say they are safe and well.

Speaking to FBC News, one of them who is living in the capital Kabul, said they kept tabs on each other and shared information on the Taliban takeover.

They say that they will only leave Afghanistan if the situation worsens.

• READ MORE: Fijians among those to be evacuated from Afghanistan
• Other Afghanistan crisis reports

The Fijian national spoke under the condition of anonymity and said he and three others were in Kabul while the others were in Mazar and Khandahar.

They said the situation was calm in the the three cities.

The man said he has been out and about in Kabul conducting assessment and supporting the UN evacuation flights in the last couple of days.

He had noticed that the usual traffic congestion had decreased significantly as most people were staying home.

Every 15 minutes
He said there was an evacuation flight almost every 15 minutes. However, movement within the country was challenging at times.

One other Fijian in Kabul was expected to relocate to Almaty in Kazakhstan.

• LISTEN: Afghanistan: Lawyer worried for evacuees stuck there

Meanwhile, RNZ News reports that the first group of New Zealand citizens, their families and other visa holders evacuated arrived yesterday in New Zealand.

New Zealand lawyer Claudia Elliott has worked across Afghanistan with the United Nations and is now trying to get visas to get at risk Afghani professionals to also be evacuated to New Zealand.

She says seeing the Taliban’s takeover has been traumatising – she is worried about how those who are given visas to New Zealand will actually be able to get out of Afghanistan.

Was at Kabul airport today for a few hours and saw flights taking off about every 15 minutes… https://t.co/gg9cc80bDm

— Charlotte Bellis (@CharlotteBellis) August 23, 2021

The climate is changing, faster than we thought – and humans have caused it. Last night, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the most comprehensive report on climate change ever – with hundreds of scientists taking part.

It says human activity is “unequivocally” driving the warming of atmosphere, ocean and land. The report projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions.

Lead author on the paper, Associate Professor Amanda Maycock of Leeds University, told RNZ Morning Report the study gave governments a range of scenarios on what the world would look like with action and without it.

• READ MORE: UN sounds ‘code red for humanity’ warning over irreversible climate impact
• Climate change has already hit. Unless we act now, a hotter, drier and more dangerous future awaits, IPCC warns
• LISTEN: ‘It’s a fact that climate change is happening and it is affecting every region of the world already today’ – Report author Dr Amanda Maycock
• LISTEN: ‘I think the message is we need to work as hard as we can to get the emissions to zero as quickly as we can” – Climate scientist Professor James Renwick
• LISTEN: ‘They’ve had their Climate Commission report. We need the debate in Parliament. Now we need to commit to a realistic target and then we need some big action’ – Professor Bronwyn Hayward
• LISTEN: ‘Our country has deferred action on climate change for the better part of 30 years’ – Climate Change Minister James Shaw
• The full sixth IPCC report

“The new scenarios that we present in the report today span a range of different possible futures, so they range all the way from making very rapid, immediate and large-scale cuts in greenhouse gas emissions all the way up to a very pessimistic scenario where we don’t make any efforts to mitigate emissions at all.

“So we provide the government with a range of possible outcomes. Now in those five scenarios that we assess in each one of them, it’s expected that the 1.5 degree temperature threshold will either be reached or exceeded in the next 20-year period,” she said.

“However, importantly, the very low emission scenario that we assess — the one where we would reach net zero emissions by the middle of this century — it reaches 1.5 degrees, it may overshoot by a very small amount, possibly about 0.1 of a degree Celsius, but later on in the century the temperature would come back down again and it would start to fall and it would stabilise below the 1.5 degree threshold.

“So based on the scenarios that we present, there is still a route for us to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, to limit temperature (rises) to 1.5 degrees Celsius (on average).

“The publication of today’s report is extremely timely ahead of the COP 26 [climate change conference in Glasgow] meeting because it really does set out in starker terms than ever before that climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.

‘Climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.’

— Dr Amanda Maycock

“So that serves, I think, as very good motivation for the negotiations that will happen at COP 26. We’ve seen in recent years several countries making commitments in law to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, including New Zealand, and so we will see in November when the meeting takes place, how the other countries react to what the is presented in the working group one report today.

“It’s a fact that climate change is happening and it is affecting every region of the world already today. So we’re seeing, you know, every year in different parts of the world we see record breaking heatwaves taking place.

“We see increasingly severe events that are connected to climate change. You know, high rainfall events and flooding, wildfire events, which are often associated and exacerbated by extreme heat and drought, and these are happening all around us all of the time now.

“So this was what was predicted by the IPCC over many decades, the IPCC’s been saying for a long time now that climate change is happening but the impacts will become more severe as the warming continues to increase and that is what we are now seeing today.

The New Zealand context
Climate scientist and report co-author Professor James Renwick of Victoria University told Morning Report “the so-called real time attribution science — being able to use models to look at events pretty much as they happen and work out the fingerprint of climate change — has advanced so much in the last five to 10 years now, this information is incorporated into the report.

“So yes, we know that a lot of these extreme events that have been happening lately have been made worse by the changing climate.

“We’ve had just over a degree of warming so far, and you know, we see the consequences of that. Add another half a degree or another whole degree. It’s actually hard to imagine just how bad it could get it.

“I think the message is we need to work as hard as we can to get the emissions to zero as quickly as we can.

“This report is the most definite of any of the IPCC reports. There’s no hedging around that climate change is definitely happening. Human activity is definitely the cause is driving all of the change.

“The messages in a way the same as we’ve had from the IPCC for 20 years, 30 years even and yet the action hasn’t come through at the political level – we really are at the sort of last gasp stage if we’re going to stop the warming at some kind of manageable level, we need the action now.

The best technologies for avoiding the impact of climate change were still reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by switching to renewable energy and planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide, Dr Renwick said.

“So the faster we can reduce our use of oil and coal, the better everyone is going to be and hopefully some of these new [geo-engineering] technologies will prove useful. But there’s nothing on the table right now that looks particularly promising.”

How we should respond
University of Canterbury’s Professor Bronwyn Hayward, a member of the IPCC core writing team, told Morning Report there would be “huge pressure on large and developed countries” ahead of the Glasgow climate change conference in November.

“I think the problem for New Zealand is that we are still using a climate target that was set two governments ago. It doesn’t meet the Paris Agreement,” she said.

“If the rest of the world did what we were doing, we’d be well over 3 degrees warmer. So we really just need to not wait to November to make a nice speech in Glasgow. There’s nothing stopping the government.

“They’ve had their Climate Commission report. We need the debate in Parliament. Now we need to commit to a realistic target and then we need some big action.

“The Climate Commission has said that we should be saying at least 36 percent cuts or much more, actually if we can, on the amount of emissions we were making back in 2005.

“But we also need a covid-like response. I think now we could really do with a popular public servant like Bloomfield to lead it, but we need a whole of government response where we are having regular reports where we’re bringing together what we’re doing on our emissions reduction and to protect people.

“So we need to see some big cuts [in emissions]. For example in transport and to be bold about this, like what would stop the government from actually supporting Auckland to provide all free public buses and congestion charging?

“I mean, make some big bold steps…

“At the moment we’re kind of keeping on treating climate as if it’s something about reducing climate through carbon changes, but it’s social actions as well, so investing in new jobs.

“So bring the thinking together, bring our Ministry of Social Development in with our Ministry for the Environment and really start thinking ‘what does a new lower carbon economy actually look like that works for people?’.

“There’s always a place for an Emissions Trading Scheme, but we have relied on that only for 30 years and we actually have to also, at the same time make real and concrete and rapid changes where we can … we need to be really planning, not just changing our market systems, but actually planning for concrete infrastructure and housing and city changes that are real on the ground and actually doing them now.

‘A catastrophe unfolding’
Minister for Climate Change and Green Party co-leader James Shaw said the key takeaway from the report was that the effects of climate change were happening now.

“It’s not something that’s going to be happening in the future somewhere else to somebody else. It is happening to us, and there’s a catastrophe that’s unfolding here in Aotearoa as well as to our nearest neighbours in Australia. And we can see that in that kind of wildfires and so on that they have every year and in the Pacific, where the rate of sea level rise is higher than just about anywhere else in the world,” he said.

“It just underscores the incredible urgency and the scale with which we need to act.

Despite the need to reduce emissions, agriculture – which contributes almost 50 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases – will not be included in the Emissions Trading Scheme until 2025.

Even then, it will be at a 95 percent discount – but Shaw said that was the “backup plan”.

“So what we’re doing is we’re building a farm level measurement management and pricing scheme for agriculture, and we’re actually the first country in the world to put in place a way of pricing agricultural emissions… you know, just because the pricing isn’t kicking in until the 1st of January 2025, people need to be reducing their emissions now.”

As for transport – which contributes 20 percent of Aotearoa’s greenhouse gas emissions – a shift to electric cars was important but so was mode shift, Shaw said.

“We need people to be able to access opportunities for walking, cycling, public transport and so on as well. And we know that our existing fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles is going to still be used for quite a long time because we hold on to our cars for a long time.

“That’s why we’re bring in a biofuels mandate to make sure that every litre of petrol sold has a biofuels component to it that will increase over time.

“But transport is the one area in our economy that has just been growing relentlessly for decades and we have to turn it around.”

“Our country has deferred action on climate change for the better part of 30 years. And what that means is that there is a much steeper curve that we are facing in front of us and [it is] much harder to do, given that we’ve waited so long to get started.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Since the coup in Myanmar on February 1, the international community has struggled to agree on coherent action against the military (also known as the Tatmadaw).

Tough action by the UN Security Council has been stymied by China, Russia, India and Vietnam, who see the Myanmar crisis as an internal affair.

Outside the UN, a strong, coordinated response by Myanmar’s neighbours in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has also been lacking due to their reluctance to interfere in each other’s affairs. Thai political expert Thitinan Pongsudhirak called it an “existential crisis” for the bloc

• READ MORE: As killings, beatings and disappearances escalate, what’s the end game in Myanmar?
  
• Ethical minefields: the dirty business of doing deals with Myanmar’s military
  
• Resistance to military regime in Myanmar mounts as nurses, bankers join protests – despite bloody crackdown

This reluctance, which has now cost the lives of over 500 civilians, rules out the use of military force to stop the violence, peacekeeping operations or even a humanitarian intervention.

It has left the international community with one remaining option for a coordinated response that could change the military’s behaviour: the imposition of economic sanctions. But even this action has been subject to much debate.

Follow the money
General sanctions that try to change the behaviour of authoritarian regimes by damaging their economies have proven problematic in the past.

Many leaders have invariably found ways around the sanctions, meaning civilians have disproportionately borne the costs of isolation.

In contrast, targeted sanctions against the specific financial interests that sustain authoritarian regimes have been more effective. These can impose pressure on regimes without affecting the broader population.

This is where the international community has the greatest potential to punish the Tatmadaw.

Since the US and other countries pursued more general sanctions on Myanmar in the 1990s and 2000s — with mixed results — the international community has gained a greater understanding of the Tatmadaw’s transnational revenue streams.

In particular, in 2019, the UN Fact-Finding Mission (UNFFM) on Myanmar released a report detailing the diverse Tatmadaw-linked enterprises that funnel revenue from foreign business transactions to the military’s leaders and units.

More recently, this list of potential targets has been expanded by non-government organisations and investigative journalists.

Researchers have also outlined the Tatmadaw’s dealings in illegal trade in drugs, gemstones, timber, wildlife and human trafficking.

The extent of information on the Tatmadaw’s financial flows shows just how vulnerable the military’s leaders are to international pressure.

Tracking the military’s legal and illegal business dealings makes it possible to identify its business partners in other countries. Governments in those countries can then take legal action against these business partners and shut off the flow of money keeping the junta afloat.

To some degree, this is starting to happen with Myanmar. The US and UK recently decided, for instance, to freeze assets and halt corporate trading with two Tatmadaw conglomerates — Myanmar Economic Corporation and Myanma Economic Holdings Limited. Both of these oversee a range of holdings in businesses that divert revenues directly to the Tatmadaw.

Myanmar’s trading partners can do more
This is only a starting point, though. To tighten the pressure on the junta, targeted sanctions need to be imposed against the full suite of entities identified by the UNFFM. These include groups like Justice for Myanmar and journalists.

The sanctions need to be accompanied by broader investigations into the Tatmadaw’s revenues from illicit trade. To counter this, Human Rights Watch has urged governments to enforce anti-money laundering and anti-corruption measures, including the freezing of assets.

Singapore’s central bank has reportedly told financial institutions to be on the look-out for suspicious transactions or money flows between the city-state and Myanmar. Singapore is the largest foreign investor in the country.

Moreover, for maximum impact, targeted sanctions need to be imposed not just by the West, but by Myanmar’s largest trading partners in the region. This includes Singapore, along with China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Thailand.

Business leaders in these countries have historically had the closest ties with Myanmar’s military and business elites. But their participation in a multi-national targeted sanctions strategy is not out of the question. For one, this would not require direct intervention within Myanmar, something they are loath to do. Imposing targeted sanctions would merely entail enforcing their domestic laws regarding appropriate business practices.

International action is becoming more urgent. Beyond the concerns about the killings of unarmed civilians, there is a larger issue of the violence extending beyond Myanmar’s borders. There are growing fears the crisis could turn Myanmar into a failed state, driving refugee flows capable of destabilising the entire region.

In short, this is no longer an “internal” matter for Myanmar — it is becoming a transnational problem that will affect regional peace and security. The tools are there to stop the financial flows to the Tatmadaw and curtail their operations. It is critical to act before the Myanmar crisis grows into an international disaster.

Dr Jonathan Liljeblad is a senior lecturer at the Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The Green Climate Fund is a beacon of rich-poor cooperation on tackling the climate crisis, reports Climate Change News.

A newly reengaged US is considering a multi-billion-dollar contribution.

However, whistleblowers say a “toxic” workplace and lack of integrity at senior levels jeopardise the fund’s ability to meet its mandate.

• READ MORE: Unequal vaccine rollout threatens inclusivity of Cop26, climate diplomats warn

Without urgent reform, they say, the US should find other channels for climate finance.

Climate Change News reports that while John Kerry promises to “make good” on a $2 billion pledge to the GCF, the UN’s flagship fund faces critically low confidence in its senior management

The presidential climate envoy is seeking to rebuild bridges with the rest of the world after former President Donald Trump reneged on US climate commitments.

Delivering a $2 billion outstanding pledge to the UN-backed climate fund, for distribution to projects in developing countries, is widely seen as a good place to start.

Campaigners are calling on the Biden administration to commit a further $6 billion to the fund.

Unless there is urgent reform, reports Climate Change News editor Megan Darby in an investigation, whistleblowers tell Climate Home News, the money would be better directed elsewhere.

Three employees of the GCF secretariat who quit in 2019 and 2020 cite concerns about a lack of integrity in vetting projects and abuses of power creating a hostile working environment.

• Read the full investigation at Climate Change News.

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Politicians and activists in Manila have welcomed a draft resolution calling for United Nations action against the thousands of killings in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, reports Al Jazeera.

The proposal by Iceland, submitted to the 47-member UN Human Rights Council in Geneva late last week, urged the Philippine government to prevent extrajudicial executions and marked the first time the council has been asked to address the crisis.

At least 28 countries, mainly European states, have so far backed the call on Duterte’s government to “carry out impartial investigations and to hold perpetrators accountable”.

READ MORE: Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is ‘large scale murdering enterprise’, says Amnesty

The Geneva forum is to vote on the resolution before ending its three-week session on Friday. The Philippines is among its current 47 members.

If passed, the council will request UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet to “prepare a comprehensive written report on the human rights situation in the Philippines and to present it to the Human Rights Council at its 44th session, to be followed by an enhanced interactive dialogue.”

Responding to the move, Philippine Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said on Friday the government need not be told by anyone to stop extrajudicial executions.

“Our government is prepared to face any inquiry if the same becomes necessary to disabuse the minds of those who rely on or give undue credence to selective, if not biased, second-hand information,” Guevarra told reporters.

One Asian ambassador, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated that his country would not support it, telling Reuters news agency: “There are worse things happening in the world.”

‘Add pressure’
The Duterte government insists the more than 6000 suspected drug dealers killed by police in anti-narcotics operations all put up a fight. But activists say that at least 27,000 have been killed since Duterte was elected in 2016 on a platform of crushing crime.

Myka Ulpina, a three-year-old shot during a police raid last weekend, is among the latest victims, they said.

Police said she was used as a human shield by her father, a suspected drug dealer who resisted arrest and opened fire. The girl’s mother has rejected that version of events.

Francis Pangilinan, senator for Philippines’ main opposition Liberal Party, welcomed the draft text on Friday.

“We hope it will add pressure from the international community so that the Duterte administration will finally see the light and realise that the daily killings is not the solution to the drug menace, and that it will sooner or later be held to account for at the very least failing to stop the killings,” he said in a statement.

‘Critical first step’
Duterte’s critics say his three-year-old campaign has been a failure, intended to create shock and fear and burnish his tough image without making a dent on big narcotics syndicates.

Allegations of police cover-ups, summary executions and planting of drugs and guns are widespread.

In a statement, the Manila-based iDefend group welcomed the draft resolution, saying it “provides a critical first step to help the Philippines”.

The group also expressed hope members of the HRC “will appreciate the urgency of the resolution and vote favourably for its adoption”.

“Widespread impunity is breaking the social fabric of Philippine society, shrinking civic spaces for dialogue and engagement, corroding the rule of law, while impressing on neighbouring states who wish to emulate the violent campaign,” it said.

“International investigation is an imperative if lives are to be saved, if human rights are to be respected and regional human security is to be protected.”

Bodies ‘pile up’
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the situation in the Philippines was a priority.

“Bodies continue to pile up in Manila and other urban areas, again in the context of the war on drugs which we have seen is very much a war against the poor, impoverished and marginalised communities, which are the biggest victims,” said Laila Matar, deputy director at HRW.

It occurs in a wider context of “attacks on human rights defenders, media activists, journalists, anyone who really dares to speak up against the killings”, she added.

By Dan McGarry in Port Vila

During his visit to Port Vila last weekend, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres was confronted with questions about West Papua – but he waffled in his responses.

The matter was on the agenda during a bilateral meeting held between Guterres and key government officials, including Prime Minister Charlot Salwai and Foreign Affairs Minister Ralph Regenvanu.

In a joint press conference, Salwai was unequivocal about Vanuatu’s continued commitment to support and help drive the decolonisation process globally, and especially in West Papua.

READ MORE: Boycott of 2019 Indonesian election successful

The UN head did little more than acknowledge the PM’s words in his own prepared remarks.

Guterres also responded to questions on the topic from the media. The following exchange occurred during a pooled interview with Agence France Presse’s Ben Bohane. He had little more to offer there.

The most serious deforestation, the most serious ecological trouble, as well as the most serious human rights abuses in the whole Pacific are happening in West Papua, Bohane said.

Shouldn’t the UN be doing more to try and stop the human right abuses, and the ecological disaster that is unfolding there?

UN ‘doing its job’
Guterres did little to raise expectations of a resolution to this crisis any time soon.

“There is a framework in the institutions, namely the human rights council… there are special procedures, there was a panel, that recently made a report on those issues, a report that was then presented internationally. Indonesia also responded,” he said.

“So the UN is doing its job, with a major concern that there and everywhere, human rights are respected.”

The problem is, he was told, that Indonesia is blocking Pacific island delegations, and they also appear to be blocking the UN Human Rights Commission from visiting West Papua.

At the moment, all international media is banned. Again, shouldn’t the UN be doing more to open up West Papua?

The Secretary-General appeared to grant that there were indeed concerns about access to the area.

“The Human Rights High Commissioner has reaffirmed availability to visit the territory, and that remains our concern, and our objective.”

So, if Indonesia says no, he was asked, is there nothing anyone can do, even the UN?

“As I said, we had the institutions working, we have a panel of experts, but there are also from our side strong commitments there and everywhere.”

Little evidence of those commitments was on display in Port Vila.

• Dan McGarry is the media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post group. This article is republished with permission.

By RNZ Pacific

The UN Secretary General António Guterres has praised Fiji as a strong committed partner in peacekeeping and for taking a leading role in the battle against climate change.

Guterres was speaking after formal talks with Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama today.

Guterres said it needec to be recognised the battle was not being won for the commitments made in Paris to be respected and there needed to be much stronger political will to rescue the planet.

READ MORE: UN Secretary-General tells youth ‘be noisy as possible’ on climate change

There was nowhere better than the Pacific to feel the moral duty to rally the international community, he said.

“The prime minister was telling me in the meeting we just had, that climate change corresponds to the battle of our lives from the point of view of Fiji and the Pacific.

“As secretary-general of the United Nations, I have many battles but I have no doubt to say that as a grandfather this is also the battle of my life.”

Guterres side-stepped a reporter’s question on whether human rights issues were discussed with the Fijian prime minister, saying Fiji’s progress is being discussed during the Universal Periodic Review process at the UN Human Rights Council.

Running out of time
Earlier, Pacific Island leaders asked the UN Secretary-General to tell the world their region was running out of time.

At a meeting yesterday in Fiji, leaders from countries in the Pacific Islands Forum said climate change was the single greatest threat to their region.

In a statement, the leaders welcomed Guterres to witness the everyday reality of climate change and to drive momentum in the lead up to his Climate Action Summit in September.

“After meeting today, we will return to our island homes. Some of us will find our villages inundated by waves and our homes and public infrastructure wrecked by cyclones. Our coral reefs are dying, our food is disappearing, and we fear for the safety of our loved ones, who are being injured and even killed by some of the most ferocious of cyclones and other extreme weather events ever witnessed in our region,” the statement said.

“Let us together seize the opportunity of the UNSG’s Climate Action Summit to make the changes we need to reverse climate change.”

They said all countries attending the summit must agree to reduce global emissions, and to mitigation and adaption support for countries that needed it.

Without agreement, the leaders said people of the Pacific would continue to lose their homes, their ways of life and their livelihoods.

Message to polluters
“To the major polluters – our today in the Pacific is undoubtedly your tomorrow.

“Sea level rise in Tuvalu is sea level rise in New York, though one might go under before the other.”

António Guterres acknowledged the message from Pacific leaders, saying he stood with them in calling for climate action.

“The Pacific has a unique moral authority to speak out. It is time for the world to listen,” he said.

This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

• More climate change stories
• Stefan Armbruster of SBS News reports

Older generations are failing to address climate change and they need the world’s youth to lead the way, says United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

Speaking at Auckland University of Technology’s southern campus in Manukau today as part of a two-day tour of New Zealand and the Pacific, Guterres said governments have not been showing the political will to address climate change.

He described this as the defining issue of our time – “It is the biggest threat to our lives and the life of the planet and we are not winning the battle.”

READ MORE: UK declares climate change emergency 

VIEW ON VIDEO: The UN WebTV report at AUT South

He added: “Things will start to change very quickly.

“It is absolutely crucial to have the leadership of the youth.”

The youth were well represented at the talk, with groups from three local high schools and many AUT students in attendance.

Introduced by the university’s Office for Pacific Advancement (OPA) strategic director Veronica Ng Lam, who welcomed him to South Auckland – “the centre of the universe”, Guterres also said fossil fuels were being subsidised by governments and that needed to stop.

Direct subsidies
“The IMF has calculated 7.2 trillion dollars spent in direct subsidies to fossil fuels or indirect negative consequences of those subsidies,” he said.

“It is totally unacceptable that taxpayer’s money is used to spread drought, to spread heat waves, to bleach corals and to make glaciers recede.

“Taxpayer’s money must be spent in what is good for humankind, not in what is threatening humankind.”

He also spoke about the role of the internet and its capacity to both help and harm society.

“It is essential to make sure that we transform the internet into an instrument for good and not an instrument to subvert the wellbeing of society.”

RNZ’s Indira Stewart then conducted an onstage interview in which she asked what needed to change for the voices of the Pacific to be heard in the climate change debate.

While Guterres could not provide a direct answer, he acknowledged that regions like the Pacific and Africa were experiencing the most adverse effects from climate change.

Common responsibility
He said there was a common responsibility, especially of wealthy countries to reverse the destructive trends and that achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 was top priority.

Students were then invited to come forward and ask questions.

A student from Papatoetoe High School cited a recent IPCC climate report, which found that millions of species could be facing extinction as a result of climate change.

The student said that it might be too late to simply wait for the younger generations to come into power in order address climate change and save threatened species.

Guterres replied: “I’m not waiting for you to be in power, I’m waiting for you to be as noisy as possible now. To mobilise your societies, your parents, your families, your friends and to put governments under pressure.”

AUT business student and Oceania Leadership Network member Christopher Tenisio then asked how the UN would deal with countries that were not fulfilling their commitment to the 2016 Paris Climate Change Accord.

“Name and shame. We don’t have instruments to punish, so name and shame.”

‘Rehearsed’ answers
After the session, Tenisio told Asia Pacific Report he was impressed with what the Secretary-General had said, but felt that the answers seemed rehearsed.

“It’s like he already knew the questions, like he’d practised the answers.”

Executive director of OPA and pro-vice chancellor of AUT South Walter Fraser said the Secretary-General had naturally come prepared with refined responses.

“He is a career politician after all. Just about every question was deflected back to the audience.”

However, he said it was a positive experience for the students to see how the United Nations operates.

“It’s good in a sense that they get to see how the system works.”

• Guterres attended a breakfast with Climate Change Minister James Shaw and youth and environmental leaders.
• Tomorrow he will travel with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters to a Pacific Leaders’ Meeting in Fiji.

By Alison Sykora

​Auckland University of Technology is 16th in the world in the newly released Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings that assess the social impact of universities against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Of the 17 goals, AUT ranked number two for Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11) covering sustainable practices such as research promoting remote working, affordable housing, and investment in art and heritage.

In Gender Equality (SDG 5) AUT is ninth in the world, recognising the percentage of research by female academics, outreach to female students in areas including STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and policies implemented to enable gender equality.

New Zealand universities have excelled in the rankings with University of Auckland achieving first place and Massey University placing number 38.

The rankings support AUT’s commitment to the United Nations SDGs, highlighted by the launch of its Sustainability Roadmap in 2018.

Chair of the AUT Sustainability Taskforce, Professor Thomas Neitzert noted that work in the area of sustainability is ongoing and in line with AUT’s deliberate focus on technological transformation, external impact and industry connections.

“Our students, stakeholders and community expect sustainability to be a priority for AUT. We believe advancing knowledge and understanding of the issues and opportunities around creating a sustainable future is essential,” said Professor Neitzert.

The Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings are the only global performance tables that assess universities against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

They use carefully calibrated indicators to provide comprehensive and balanced comparisons across three broad areas: research, outreach, and stewardship.

Alison Sykora is head of AUT communications.

• Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings

By Karl Mathiesen and Natalie Sauer in Incheon

Only the remaking of the human world in a generation can now prevent serious, far reaching and once-avoidable climate change impacts, according to the global scientific community.

In a major report released yesterday, the UN’s climate science body found limiting warming to 1.5C, compared to 2C, would spare a vast sweep of people and life on earth from devastating impacts.

To hold warming to this limit, the scientists said unequivocally that carbon pollution must fall to “net zero” in around three decades: a huge and immediate transformation, for which governments have shown little inclination so far.

READ MORE: Global warming of 1.5C summary for policymakers

“The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” said Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) research into the impacts of warming.

The report from the IPCC is a compilation of existing scientific knowledge, distilled into a 33-page summary presented to governments. If and how policymakers respond to it will decide the future of vulnerable communities around the world.

“I have no doubt that historians will look back at these findings as one of the defining moments in the course of human affairs,” the lead climate negotiator for small island states Amjad Abdulla said. “I urge all civilised nations to take responsibility for it by dramatically increasing our efforts to cut the emissions responsible for the crisis.”

What happens in the next few months will impact ON the future of the Paris Agreement and the global climate

Abdulla is from the Maldives. It is estimated that half a billion people in countries like his rely on coral ecosystems for food and tourism. The difference between 1.5C and 2C is the difference between losing 70-90 percent of coral by 2100 and reefs disappearing completely, the report found.

Small island states
Small island states were part of a coalition that forced the Paris Agreement to consider both a 1.5C and 2C target. Monday’s report is a response to that dual goal. Science had not clearly defined what would happen at each mark, nor what measures would be necessary to stay at 1.5C.

As the report was finalised, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative on sustainable energy Rachel Kyte praised those governments. “They had the sense of urgency and moral clarity,” she said, adding that they knew “the lives that would hang in the balance between 2[C] and 1.5[C]”.

37 things you need to know about 1.5C global warming

At 2C, stresses on water supplies and agricultural land, as well as increased exposure to extreme heat and floods, will increase, risking poverty for hundreds of millions, the authors said.

Thousands of plant and animal species would see their liveable habitat cut by more than half. Tropical storms will dump more rain from the Philippines to the Caribbean.

“Everybody heard of what happened to Dominica last year,” Ruenna Hayes, a delegate to the IPCC from St Kitts and Nevis, told Climate Home News. “I cannot describe the level of absolute alarm that this caused not only me personally, but everybody I know.”

Around 65 people died when Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean island in September 2017, destroying much of it.

In laying out what needs to be done, the report described a transformed world that will have to be built before babies born today are middle aged. In that world 70-85 percent of electricity will be produced by renewables.

More nuclear power
There will be more nuclear power than today. Gas, burned with carbon capture technology, will still decline steeply to supply just supply 8 percent of power. Coal plants will be no more. Electric cars will dominate and 35-65 percent of all transport will be low or no-emissions.

To pay for this transformation, the world will have invested almost a trillion dollars a year, every year to 2050.

Our relationship to land will be transformed. To stabilise the climate, governments will have deployed vast programmes for sucking carbon from the air. That will include protecting forests and planting new ones.

It may also include growing fuel to be burned, captured and buried beneath the earth. Farms will be the new oil fields. Food production will be squeezed. Profoundly difficult choices will be made between feeding the world and fuelling it.

The report is clear that this world avoids risks compared to one that warms to 2C, but swerves judgement on the likelihood of bringing it into being. That will be for governments, citizens and businesses, not scientists, to decide.

During the next 12 months, two meetings will be held at which governments will be asked to confront the challenge in this report: this year’s UN climate talks in Poland and at a special summit held by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres in September 2019.

The report’s authors were non-committal about the prospects. Jim Skea, a co-chair at the IPCC, said: “Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes.”

‘Monumental goal’
Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a former lead author of the IPCC, said: “If this report doesn’t convince each and every nation that their prosperity and security requires making transformational scientific, technological, political, social and economic changes to reach this monumental goal of staving off some of the worst climate change impacts, then I don’t know what will.”

The scientist have offered a clear prescription: the only way to avoid breaching the 1.5C limit is for humanity to cut its CO2 emissions by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and reach “net-zero” by around 2050.

But global emissions are currently increasing, not falling.

The EU, one of the most climate progressive of all major economies, aims for a cut of around 30 percent by 2030 compared to its own 2010 pollution and 77-94 percent by 2050. It is currently reviewing both targets and says this report will inform the decisions.

If the EU sets a carbon neutral goal for 2050 it will join a growing group of governments seemingly in line with a mid-century end to carbon – including California (2045), Sweden (2045), UK (2050 target under consideration) and New Zealand (2050).

But a fundamental tenet of climate politics is that expectations on nations are defined by their development. If the richest, most progressive economies on earth set the bar at 2045-2050, where will China, India and Latin America end up? If the EU aims for 2050, the report concludes that Africa will need to have the same goal.

Some of the tools needed are available, they just need scaling up. Renewable deployment would need to be six times faster than it is today, said Adnan Z Amin, the director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency. That was “technically feasible and economically attractive”, he added.

Innovation, social change
Other aspects of the challenge require innovation and social change.

But just when the world needs to go faster, the political headwinds in some nations are growing. Brazil, home to the world’s largest rainforest, looks increasingly likely to elect the climate sceptic Jair Bolsonaro as president.

The world’s second-largest emitter – the US – immediately distanced itself from the report, issuing a statement that said its approval of the summary “should not be understood as US endorsement of all of the findings and key messages”.

It said it still it intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

The summary was adopted by all governments at a closed-door meeting between officials and scientists in Incheon, South Korea that finished on Saturday. The US sought and was granted various changes to the text. Sources said the interventions mostly helped to refine the report. But they also tracked key US interests – for example, a mention of nuclear energy was included.

Sources told CHN that Saudi Arabia fought hard to amend a passage that said investment in fossil fuel extraction would need to fall by 60 percent between 2015 and 2050. The clause does not appear in the final summary.

But still, according to three sources, the country has lodged a disclaimer with the report, which will not be made public for months. One delegate said it rejected “a very long list of paragraphs in the underlying report and the [summary]”.

Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

• COP 24 in Katowice, Poland

A New Zealand-based West Papua advocacy group has appealed to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and other leaders meeting at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru next week to support Vanuatu’s United Nations initiative.

Vanuatu has pledged to take a resolution to the 2019 UN General Assembly endorsing West Papua’s right to self-determination and calling for West Papua to be re-inscribed on the list of nations overseen by the UN Decolonisation Committee (the Committee of 24).

Vanuatu has the strong backing of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).

READ MORE: PMC director condemns targeting of journalists and silence on West Papua

A statement from West Papua Action Auckland group said today New Zealand had the opportunity to be a game-changer at this Forum meeting.

“New Zealand is influential at the Forum and its support for the issue to go to the UN is crucial,” said spokesperson Maire Leadbeater, author of the recent book See No Evil about NZ’s “betrayal” of West Papuan aspirations.

“The people of West Papua were cruelly denied their right to self-determination in the 1960s, setting the stage for decades of state sanctioned violence at the hands of the Indonesian military.

“The 1962 New York Agreement brokered by the United States delivered West Papua to Indonesian control without any consultation with West Papuan representatives.

‘Fraudulent exercise’
“The so-called ‘Act of Free Choice’ held in 1969 was a fraudulent exercise carried out under extreme duress.

“This issue is extremely urgent. The people of West Papua are experiencing slow genocide due to ongoing human rights abuses and the harmful conditions of life experienced by so many Papuans.

“Authoritative human rights reports document the routine use of torture and killings as well as the denial the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Not to mention the constant inflow of migrants and the marginalisation of indigenous Papuans.

“It is time to stand up for our Melanesian neighbours. West Papuans risk their lives to speak out for self-determination and freedom.

“New Zealand should have nothing to fear by joining in a call to involve the United Nations in what is the most grievous human rights crisis in our region.”

• Vanuatu seeks Forum support
• More West Papua stories

Three hundred schoolchildren from the greater Jakarta area sat on a red carpet covering the cavernous Soedjarwo auditorium—named to honour the country’s first forestry minister—at the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry in January this year.

They were there to participate in the government-led Climate Festival; the theme was “Three Years of Climate Change Achievements”.

Dr Nur Masripatin, the then Director General of Climate Change (she stepped down in February 2018), tossed the kids a question on climate change: what will become of Indonesia if nothing is done about climate change by 2030?

An elementary schoolboy said the country would become hotter and drier. Another two students added to his answer, talking about global warming and the greenhouse gases that lead to climate change.

The director-general beamed broadly. Dr Nur Masripatin, who has a PhD in forest biometrics from Canterbury University in New Zealand, has been a veteran negotiator for Indonesia at the annual United Nations climate conference since 2005.

Indonesia is a country of islands, with a majority of the population living along coasts vulnerable to climate change, she explained to the assembled pupils. The government hopes that such an event will equip children with information on climate change that they’ll carry into adulthood.

Reaching Indonesia’s targets
The event also sought to inform the public on the progress made in implementing international agreements and national policies, such as the Paris Agreement and the Nationally Determined Contribution, related to climate change. Government projects such as this one are only deemed successful if the people meant to benefit from the project feel that they have a stake in the issue, and commit to seeing it through.

The Paris Agreement, reached at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015, is a legally binding international contract to limit global warming “well below” 2˚C, through lowering carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the degrading of forests. The ultimate aim is zero carbon emissions worldwide by 2050.

In undertaking to realise the Paris Agreement, Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, sets a target of cutting emissions by 29 percent against a “business as usual” scenario (in which no planned action is taken) and by 41 percent with international cooperation. This climate action plan is due to be implemented from 2020 to 2030.

One of the many documents handed out to participants of the Climate Festival was the country’s NDC Implementation Strategy, listing nine programmes with assigned activities spanning from ownership and commitment development to implementation and review. Also included was an academic paper on the draft government regulation for climate change.

The festival, and its accompanying books, talks, and handout material produced by the director general and her team, outlines an ambitious climate agenda. Yet what’s not covered is interesting, too.

While the NDC Implementation Strategy cites projected greenhouse gas emission levels, it does not provide details on whether, or how much, emissions have already been reduced since 2011, when the government issued its national action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2020. Nor does the NDC explain the formula it uses to reduce emissions in the five slated sectors: land-use, energy, IPPU (industrial processes and product use), agriculture and waste. The first two sectors alone produced 82 percent of the country’s carbon emissions in 2010–2012.

Despite its absence in the Climate Festival’s documents, information on emission reduction is provided by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas). From 2010–2017, Indonesia has cut greenhouse gas emission by only 13.46 percent. It’s a figure the Indonesian government aren’t eager to publicise—it’s a long way from their target. The government doesn’t officially state how much carbon emissions has been reduced because the NDC does not start until 2020, a government official explained.

“The government shall regularly provide emission reduction achievements in line with the NDC target it has committed to after Indonesia ratified the Paris Agreement. This is in line with our commitment to the NDC up to 2030. The information can be accessed in SIGN SMART prepared by the Environment and Forestry Ministry,” says Dr Agus Justianto, Head of the Ministry’s Agency for Research, Development and Innovation.

A major emitter of greenhouse gases
According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), Indonesia is the world’s sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the largest contributor of forest-based emissions—an unsurprising fact if one thinks back to the devastating forest and peat fires in 2014 and 2015. Images from the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released in 2014 and 2015 show dense smoke blanketing parts of the country and its neighbours. Those two years were exceptionally bad, but such burning takes place annually.

In September 2017, WRI Indonesia published a 36-page working paper on how Indonesia can achieve its climate change mitigation goal. The organisation found that existing policies in the land-use and energy sectors, even if fully implemented, are inadequate if the country is really serious about reaching the 29% target by 2030. Using its own methodology, WRI Indonesia estimated that the existing policies would only result in a 19% reduction.

A failure to achieve its mitigation target means that Indonesia won’t be able to contribute its declared share in global fulfillment of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Rethinking policies
Reaching the NDC goal would require revisiting existing policies, particularly in agriculture and energy.

In agriculture, the government wants to double the output of the highly lucrative oil palm by 2020. This would require the clearing of more forest and peatland to add to the 14 million hectares of oil palm plantations already present in the country—a move that would surely lead to more carbon emissions. The policy also undermines a forest moratorium, in place since 2011, on the issuing of permits to convert primary forest and peatland to oil palm plantations, pulp and paper estates and other land-use change activities.

Dr Agus denies any planned clearing of peatland, insisting that the moratorium is still in place. What the government wants to increase, he stresses, is productivity per hectare on existing oil palm plantations.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo also has a plan to boost the country’s energy capacity by 35,000 megawatts during his current term, which comes to an end in 2019. Only 2000 megawatts of that energy will come from renewable energy; 20,000 megawatts will come from coal-fired plants, another major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Oil and gas, as well as hydropower, will provide the rest.

This matter of generating 20,000 megawatts of energy from coal-fired plants was put to Bambang Brodjonegoro, Indonesia’s Minister for National Development Planning and Head of Bappenas, at the Southeast Asia Symposium jointly organised by Oxford University and the University of Indonesia’s School of Environmental Science.

The “best solution”, advocated by environmentalists, would be to phase coal-fired plants out completely and embrace renewable energy sources. It’s in line with the call of the “Powering Past Coal” alliance, a partnership of over 20 governments who intend to move away from coal. No Southeast Asian government has joined the alliance thus far.

Brodjonegoro, a former dean of the University of Indonesia’s School of Economics, replied that Indonesia’s plan relies on the “second-best solution”: new coal-fired power plants will use clean coal technology, and that renewable energy, such as solar, wind or biomass, will be developed for isolated areas that are not yet part of the country’s power grid. Energy is required for economic growth, he argued, and Indonesia has abundant coal deposits to meet that energy need.

But Indonesia might not need as much energy as policymakers initially thought. According to the Electricity Supply Business Plan 2018-2027 drafted by the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, a projection in Indonesia’s additional power needs dropped from 78 gigawatts under the 2017–2026 plan to 56 gigawatts in the 2018–2027 plan. The decrease was due to overestimating the growth in demand; if the government had followed through with the initial plan, it would end up overspending by building unused power plants.

Plans are also underway to increase the portion of renewable energy—while renewable energy only provided 12.52 percent of Indonesia’s energy in 2017, it’s expected to rise to 23 percent in 2025. Coal is expected to decline as a source of energy from 58.3 percent in 2017 to 54.4 percent in 2025. But environmental groups say it’s still not good enough.

“Many nations like India, China and even Saudi Arabia have altered their investment direction to renewable energy, whereas Indonesia still depends on coal for more than 50 percent of its power source,” said Hindun Mulaika, Greenpeace Indonesia’s climate and energy campaigner, in a recent press release.

Other organisations have called for more ambitious action from the Indonesian government. Germanwatch and Climate Action Network pointed out in their 2018 Climate Change Performance Index that Indonesia has the potential to further develop renewable energy, particularly since it has relatively large amounts of hydropower. WRI Indonesia recommended other mitigation actions, such as strengthening and extending the forest moratorium, restoring degraded forest and peatland, and implementing energy conservation efforts.

According to WRI Indonesia, increasing renewable sources in the energy mix will require implementing multiple policies, such as a carbon tax on fossil fuel power plants, the replacement of coal-fired plants with wind or solar sources, and the provision of subsidies for the promotion of renewable energy.

Indonesia already has bilateral and multilateral agreements for cooperation in climate change, such as an accord with Norway signed in 2010, where the Scandinavian country pledged up to USD1 billion for “significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, forest degradation and peatland conversion”. The financial contribution is made based on a verified emissions reduction mechanism. However, an influential coal lobby makes it difficult for the country to take bolder steps away from coal power plants.

A target that cannot be achieved
As it stands, Indonesia’s 29 percent NDC target is not achievable, says a government technocrat.

“It is not based on what sectors knew, what the energy sector knew, what the road transport sector knew. No one has reliable data. Everyone has some sense of statistics,” says the technocrat, who has asked to remain anonymous as he’s not authorised to speak to the press.

The distinction between data and statistics is an important one—while statistics present a snapshot of one aspect of an issue, data is a real mapping of what exists, providing a more holistic picture. A good NDC should have reliable data from every sector, disaggregated to show the reality in each of Indonesia’s 465 sub-national districts and town governments. While there might be a political aspect to this process, politics should not be dominant, the official added.

“No one has reliable data. Everyone has some sense of statistics”

The lack of data is a big problem with a major impact on the way targets have been set. The government arrived at the 29% target via inter-sectoral meetings where each of the five mitigation sectors (energy, land-use, industry, agriculture, waste) stated how far they were willing to go in terms of reductions. But if the various groups only have “some sense of statistics” without actual reliable data, the targets set could easily be off the mark.

Hopes for a future generation
Indonesia’s climate future is not bleak; there’s still hope for significant progress moving forward. Beyond government policy and programmes, numerous civil society organisations are actively working on the issue.

One example is Climate Reality Indonesia, which had a booth at the Climate Festival. Its members, who have participated in Al Gore’s climate course, are from all walks of life: students, academics, public officials, business people, homemakers, journalists, artists, clerics. They’re committed to spreading climate awareness among their own circles to encourage a ripple effect that will increase public knowledge across the country.

“Climate change can be viewed from different angles: water, air, marine resources, forests, agriculture, energy, education, laws. Hence it’s important to break down the issue of interest to understand the ground sentiment,” says Amanda Katili Niode, manager of Climate Reality Indonesia.

There are signs that the public are interested. In 2015, a survey by the Pew Research Centre found that 63 percent of the country supported limiting greenhouse gas emissions as part of an international agreement. Climate Reality Indonesia is thus working on creating visual materials on specific climate change impacts and solutions to use in their outreach programmes.

Following Climate Change Director General Nur Masripatin’s session, Hidayatun Nisa, a 24-year-old university graduate, delivered a rousing speech before the assembled schoolchildren. She told them about her work as a facilitator in the Care of Peat Village project run by the Peat Restoration Agency in a village in Jambi province on the east coast of central Sumatra, calling on students to study how to protect the environment for a better future.

“I do hope the children can learn to be sensitive to living things and protect the environment where they live. This also applies to their parents as the educational process that has the greatest effect is the education at home,” says Nisa.

Without a change in gear for a more ambitious and robust emphasis on renewable energy and the safeguarding of the environment, Indonesia’s climate change ambitions could end up amounting to little more than a can’t-do plan. As it is, the current generation is already not on track to meet its own stipulated goals. If the country does not undertake a course correction soon, today’s Indonesian children will find themselves having to pick up the slack in the future.

Warief Djajanto Basorie is a contributor to New Naratif, an independent research and journalism publication. He has reported for the domestic KNI News Service in Jakarta 1971-1991 and concurrently was Indonesia correspondent for the Manila-based DEPTHnews Asia (DNA, 1974-1991). DNA is a feature service reporting on development in Asia for Asian media in English and the vernacular. This article is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

West Papua has experienced a “significant aggravation” of the human rights situation in the past two years compared to previous years, says a new report from more than 40 faith-based and civil rights organisations.

“Reports by local human rights defenders describe an alarming shrinking of democratic space,” says the report.

“Although Indonesian President Joko Widodo pushed economic development and granted clemency to five long-term political prisoners, the police strictly limited even the most peaceful dissident political activities.”

READ MORE: Pacific Media Watch on Indonesia’s hit back at Oceania nations

The report says that Indigenous Papuans – particularly women – “continued to have a high risk of becoming victims of human rights violations.”

It adds that “racist attitudes toward West Papuans among the police and military, insufficient legal protection, the lack of proper law enforcement, inconsistent policy implementation and corruptive practices among government officials contributed to the impunity of security forces.”

Local journalists in West Papua also continued to face “intimidation and obstruction” from the security forces.

This is the fifth report of the International Coalition for Papua (ICP) covering events from January 2015 until December 2016.

Human rights analysis
More than 40 organisations in West Papua, Jakarta, and worldwide have brought their analysis on the human rights and conflict situation in West Papua together.

The executive summary of the 218-pages report explains how several human rights standards have deteriorated over the last two years.

The report is compiled by the International Coalition for Papua (ICP) and the German Westpapua-Netzwerk (WPN). The executive summary says:

“The years 2015 and 2016 were characterised by a significant aggravation of the human rights situation in West Papua compared to previous years. The term West Papua refers to the Indonesian easternmost provinces of ‘Papua’ and ‘Papua Barat’. Reports by local human rights defenders describe an alarming shrinking of democratic space.

“Although Indonesian President Joko Widodo pushed economic development and granted clemency to five long-term political prisoners, the police strictly limited even the most peaceful dissident political activities.

“Indigenous Papuans, particularly women, continued to have a high risk of becoming victims of human rights violations. Racist attitudes toward West Papuans among the police and military, insufficient legal protection, the lack of proper law enforcement, inconsistent policy implementation and corruptive practices amongst government officials contributed to the impunity of security forces.

“Government critics and activists faced legal prosecution with varying charges. Using a charge of treason (‘makar’) remained common against non-violent offenders.

Increasing ‘incitement’ charges
“West Papuan political activists also faced an increasing number of charges incitement or violence despite the non-violence of protest and almost all activism.

“The deterioration of the political and civil rights situation in West Papua during the past two years was most obvious in the sheer number of political arrests.

“Those arrests drastically increased to 1083 in 2015, and then quadrupled in 2016 to 5361 arrests, in tandem with growing political protest for self-determination.

“Almost all of the arrests came during peaceful protest in support of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). In addition, the Indonesian government and the regional police in West Papua increasingly restricted the right to freedom of opinion and expression using official statements (Makhlumat) issued by the Papuan Regional Police in 2016.

“Local journalists in West Papua faced continued intimidation and obstruction from the security forces. In comparison to previous years, the number of reported cases against local journalists has slightly decreased throughout the reporting period 2015 and 2016.

“President Joko Widodo’s promise in May 2015, to make West Papua freely accessible to foreign journalists and international observers was not implemented. Foreign journalists were in an increasing number of cases prevented from entering West Papua or when permitted to enter, they faced obstruction, surveillance, intimidation and physical violence.

“International human rights organisations and humanitarian organisations such as the Inter­national Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) remained banned from freely accessing West Papua.

Threatened, obstructed
“Human rights defenders in West Papua had to work under fear of being monitored, threatened and obstructed by the security forces. The killing of well-known human rights defender Joberth Jitmau, marked the sad highlight of attacks against human rights defenders during these two years.

“The police termed Jitmau’s killing a traffic accident and did not conduct a criminal investigation. Jitmau’s case was a representative example of the widespread impunity in West Papua.

“Only in rare instances were security forces prosecuted in public or military trials. Two of the three cases of prosecution resulted in considerably low sentences for the perpetrators in view of the severity of the criminal offences.

“Security force members also continued to use torture and ill-treatment as a common response to political protest or incidents of alleged disturbance of public order. Extra-judicial killings occurred particularly often as an act of revenge or retaliation for violent acts or other non-violent interactions with members of the security forces.

“The situation with regard to economic, social and cultural rights in West Papua was stagnant. The quality of education in West Papua remained considerably low, due to poor management of the education system, inadequate competencies, high absence rates amongst teachers, and inadequate funding. (Less than 1 percent of Papua Province’s annual budget goes to education.)

“There is still no culturally appropriate curriculum in place, which is capable of improving the educational situation of indigenous Papuan children and of preserving local cultures.

“Health care and education remained in a devas­tating condition, far below the national average, despite the large amount of special autonomy funds that flow to the two administrative provinces Papua and Papua Barat.

Strong imbalance
“There is a strong imbalance in the fulfillment of minimum standards in terms of health, education, food and labor rights between the urban areas and the remote inland areas of West Papua.

“Indigenous Papuans, who mostly reside outside the urban centres, suffer the most of this imbalance. Both Papuan provinces are amongst the regions with the highest prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS infections and child mortality of any ‘Indonesian province’, while the quality of health services is alarmingly low.

“Insufficient equipment in rural health care institutions and a lack of adequate health monitoring and response mechanisms remained strikingly evident. These shortcomings were highlighted when a pertussis epidemic broke out in the remote highland regency of Nduga, killing least 51 children and three adults within a span of three months in late 2015. Malnutrition enabled the rapid spread of the epidemic.

“The case also mirrors the government’s growing challenge to guarantee indigenous Papuans right to food. Palm oil plantations and other agri­cultural mega-projects have led to the destruction of local food sources, livestock and access to clean drinking water.

“Cases of domestic violence are often settled in non-legal ways, which fail to bring justice for the victims and lack a deterrent effect for perpetrators. Women living with HIV/AIDS are particularly often facing discrimination and stigmatization.

“The very existence of West Papuans is threatened by the uncontrolled migration from other parts of Indonesia. This particularly applies to the urban centers where they have largely become a marginalised minority facing strong economic competition.

“In most rural areas, where indigenous Papuans are still the majority, government-promoted large-scale natural resource exploitation projects attract migrants and continue to cause severe environmental degra­dation as well as the destruction of live­ stock of indigenous communities.

“Govern­ment institutions continued to facilitate the interests of private Indonesian and foreign companies. This practice negatively impacts indigenous people’s right to their ancestral lands and resources as well as their right to determine their development.

“Resource extraction often means clearing large forest areas and polluting of water resources, thereby forcing indigenous communities to change their very way of life. Destruction of forests and hunting grounds as a life source puts an additional burden on women, in particular.”

• Read the full report here
• Banned West Papua independence petition handed to UN

Vanuatu’s Prime Minister, Charlot Salwai Tabimasmas, says some South Pacific leaders at this month’s Forum in Samoa backed off making a decision about West Papua because it was a “sensitive issue”.

This was in spite of it being a Forum agenda item.

However, Tabimasmas labelled the efforts of Vanuatu “developing” as several countries in the region had recently joined Vanuatu in supporting West Papuan self-determination.

Nauru, Marshall Islands, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu were determined to continue the work towards taking the issue to the UN Human Rights Committee and were taking the issue up in the corridors of the UN General Assembly in New York, Tabimasmas added.

“So far, Vanuatu continues to commit itself to spearheading the West Papua cause, through the government, the civil society, and the churches. And this year we took the matter up to the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries,” Tabimasmas said.

The council of ministers has appointed the former Ambassador to Brussels, Roy Micky Joy, as the special envoy for the issue of West Papua.

“These are some of the things the Vanuatu government has undertaken to show its commitment to the West Papua cause.

“I think the lobby effort has developed because before only Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands were taking up the struggle for West Papua, but now there are six other countries from Polynesia and Micronesia supporting them, advocating for West Papuan self-determination and against violation of human rights.”

Progress beyond region
The Parliamentary Secretary for the Prime Minister’s Office, Johnny Koanapo, echoed Tabimasmas’ comments in a meeting with media, the Vanuatu Daily Post reports.

Koanapo said the issue of West Papua’s self-determination and violations of human rights by Indonesia had progressed beyond the South Pacific islands region.

“The issue has now moved beyond the jurisdiction of the Melanesian Spearhead Group,” he said.

“It has moved to the level of the Forum and has become a regional issue. And if you see how the issue was listed in the South Pacific Islands Forum meeting to deal with out of 14 issues, one of them was West Papua.”

“The issue now has progressed to the international stage and I say this with a lot of confidence — the issue has never taken so much international attention as it is today, simply because the government is serious about it, there is no second opinion on it as to whether the government will take up the issue or not.

“The government has taken on this role because it is a global country and we are global citizens with obligations to defend such things as human rights, which are parts of the rights of a human being,” Koanapo said.

Pacific Island solidarity
The Vanuatu Daily Post also reports the prime ministers of Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands are organising a side event at the UN General Assembly in New York this week to continue to lobby for West Papua, so that when leaders make their political statements at the General Assembly these would reflect the Pacific’s efforts.

West Papua’s plight and struggle for independence from Indonesia was raised at the UN General Assembly in September last year, which the Free West Papua Campaign called an “incredible show of Pacific Island solidarity” and a “landmark moment”.

The 72nd session of the UN General Assembly is currently underway in New York and will conclude next Monday, September 25.

Jonas Cullwick is a reporter with the Vanuatu Daily Post. VDP news items are republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

United Nations Rapporteur Agnes Callamard has slammed the P1000 (NZ$26) budget that the House of Representatives voted to give the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) for 2018.

Callamard has explained in an email to Rappler that the CHR “is a crucial institution for the Philippines: for human rights protection, the rule of law, accountability”.

“It cannot deliver on its mandate without an appropriate budget, particularly at a time when it is confronted with allegations of massive human rights violations throughout the country, and including, but not only, in the context of the ill-advised, destructive ‘war on drugs,'” Callamard said.

READ MORE: Give CHR zero budget if it cannot be abolished – Alvarez

“The people of the Philippines deserve a strong independent human rights institution able to monitor, investigate, and report on human rights violations, protect victims and their families, and hold the powerful to account for their abuses of international human rights standards,” she said.

“Instead they are getting a ‘war on drugs’ which, by the President’s own account, has failed to curtail addiction rates, while creating a climate of fear and insecurity, feeding impunity, and undermining the constitutional fabric of the country. If the Philippine Congress is looking for public money being wasted, damaging and hurting the Philippine society, this is it,” the UN rapporteur said.

Earlier, in a tweet, Callamard said of the lawmakers’ move: “Reprehensible and unconscionable”.

Callamard is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, connected with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

She was the UN expert invited by President Rodrigo Duterte to probe the killings in the Philippines, provided that she engages Duterte in a debate – a condition that she has refused.

Callamard made her statement after the House of Representatives voted 119-32 to allocate only P1000 for the CHR in 2018.

In contrast, the House earlier approved a P900-million ($18-million) budget for Oplan Double Barrel, the anti-drug campaign of the Philippine National Police.

The P1000 budget for the CHR is not final, however, as it has to go through the Senate too for another round of deliberations. In any case, it already drew flak from Filipinos who described it as an “act of tyranny”.

The House is dominated by allies of Duterte, who has repeatedly slammed the CHR for questioning the killings in his war on drugs.

More than 14,100 people have been killed in both police operations and vigilante-style killings since Duterte began his drug war in July 2016.

• More Philippines stories

A Wansolwara second-year student journalist from the University of the South Pacific has been included among 10 Pacific journalists who have been chosen to report from this year’s United Nations climate conference (COP23) taking place in Bonn, Germany, on November 6-17.

USP’s Mereoni Mili is one of two radio journalists selected.

The journalists from print, online and radio/TV will receive sponsored participation in the conference, media training at the DW Akademie and access to UN and other experts.

The Pacific Island journalism competition reflects the important role the small island developing state of Fiji will be playing at the 23rd Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the official title of the conference.

Fiji will be presiding over COP23 and the Fijian Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama, will undertake the key role of COP President on behalf of all countries attending.

The competition was generously funded by the German government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Nick Nuttall, Director of Communications of the UNFCCC and Spokesperson for COP23, said:

High standard
“We are impressed by the high standard of the entries to the competition and would have liked to invite everyone who submitted their work under the competition, but that is unfortunately not possible.

“We’re now looking forward to welcoming the 10 winners in Bonn in November.

“I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for financially supporting this competition, and to the Fijian COP23 Presidency for its advice and getting the message out about the competition in the Pacific region.

“The presidency, the government of Germany and the UNFCCC were concerned that the costs of getting to and from Bonn would have been prohibitive for many journalists from that region.”

“We all acknowledged that it was vital to have media from that location here to report to their publics and witness the negotiations, the rich array of global climate action events taking place and the cultural activities that surround such conferences,” he added.

The 10 participants were selected by a judging committee consisting of two members of the UNFCCC; two from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs communications branch; and two independent judges representing the Fijian COP23 Presidency.

The decision of the jury was final.

The jury selected six winners from print and online, two from radio and two from TV.

The winners are:
Print and online:
Ofani Eremae (Solomon Star, Solomon Islands)
Iliesa Tora (The Nuku’alofa Times, Tonga)
Lani Wendt Young (Samoa Planet, Samoa)
Jared Koli (The Island Sun, Solomon Islands)
Lice Movono (The Fiji Times, Fiji)
Anita Roberts (Vanuatu Daily Post, Vanuatu)

Radio:
Mereoni Mili (Wansolwara, University of the South Pacific, Fiji)
Georgina Kekea (Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation, Solomon Islands)

TV:
Elenoa Turagaiviu (FBC News, Fiji)
Florence Jonduo (EMTV, Papua New Guinea)

• UNFCCC Newsroom

Forty-two people have died as a result of severe tropical cyclone Winston, says Fiji’s Ambassador to the United Nations Peter Thomson.

Ambassador Thomson said in New York all reports indicated the scale of destruction was unlike anything Fiji had ever experienced before.

A statement issued by the Fiji Department of Information said the government continued to assess the damage as it sent emergency crews to the hardest-hit outlying islands.

Ambassador Thomson said:

All reports indicate the scale of destruction is beyond anything experienced before in Fiji.
The Fijian Government’s first concern is to provide humanitarian emergency assistance, food, water, sanitation and shelter to people in dire need.
This process has begun and we are working in close coordination with humanitarian partners to deliver the assistance required.

Fiji’s Representative to the UN said 14,000 people were sheltering in 274 evacuation centres, and a 30-day state of natural disaster had been declared by the government.

Ambassador Thomson is expected to make a joint presentation with the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to member states at the United Nations this Friday.

The government statement said the briefing would include needs assessment information for donors and partners and added the timing was necessary as the briefing would cover a full evaluation of the situation.

Thomson thanked foreign nations and organisations which had provided early assistance. He said it was critical that the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) control and coordinate the relief work.

He added the UN was firmly supporting the work of NDMO.

He said Fijians were by nature resilient and strong of heart and spirit, but the severity of the situation meant Fiji was going to require extensive assistance from the international community in the days, weeks and months ahead.