The 55th Pacific Islands Forum is underway in Palau, and the agenda is crowded. Climate finance, ocean governance, economic resilience—these are the familiar pillars of regional solidarity. Yet beneath the surface, two urgent questions are demanding answers that the Forum has been reluctant to give. The first is historical: the unfinished decolonisation of Kanaky (New Caledonia). The second is contemporary: the militarisation of our Pasifika waters by great powers. Together, they form a single test of whether the Forum still stands for Pasifika sovereignty—or has become a forum for managing external interests.
The Melanesian Spearhead Group, meeting on the margins of the Forum, has forced the decolonisation issue back onto the table. MSG/DG Anna Naupa has made it clear that time is running out. The UN’s Fourth Decade on Decolonisation ends in 2030—just four years away. Yet Kanaky’s Indigenous Kanak people remain trapped in a protracted process, with France playing a role that Naupa bluntly describes as “not an honest broker.”
The MSG has agreed to take this matter to the Forum, seeking to restore the attention that was so critical in the 1980s when the Forum helped secure Kanaky’s inscription on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. That was when the Forum understood its purpose: to champion the rights of Pasifika peoples to self-determination, to speak truth to colonial powers, and to refuse to let history be buried under diplomatic convenience.
But where has that Forum gone? As Naupa notes, the issue has “lost prominence.” The Forum has been silent while Kanaky’s future hangs in the balance. This silence is not neutrality; it is complicity.
Meanwhile, the Forum faces a parallel crisis. Pasifika civil society, led by the Pasifika Network on Globalisation’s Joey Tau, has condemned the use of the Pasifika as a missile testing ground by both China and the United States. Tau’s frustration is palpable: leaders have been silent not only on these tests but also on Japan’s Fukushima wastewater disposal into our ocean.
Forum SG Baron Waqa has offered the diplomatic line: leaders oppose all missile tests, but any statement must respect sovereign positions and emerge from consensus. This is technically true—but it also exposes the Forum’s paralysis. At the Foreign Ministers Meeting in Suva last month, Fiji backed Aotearoa’s push for a united regional position condemning China’s July missile test. But Kiribati and Naoero refused, and no statement was issued.
The fracture lines are clear. Smaller nations, heavily dependent on aid and investment, are reluctant to alienate any great power. This is not disunity for its own sake; it is the rational response of nations caught between competing pressures. But it is also a failure of regional solidarity—and a failure of leadership.
This is where Fiji must step up. As the largest Pasifika nation after PNG, Fiji carries a weight and a responsibility that it cannot abdicate. Its absence at the MSG leaders’ meeting—represented at ministerial level rather than by its Prime Minister—is troubling. If Fiji is to lead, it must show up, not just in body but in will. It must champion Kanaky’s decolonisation as a moral imperative, not a diplomatic inconvenience. It must also model a principled stance on militarisation, speaking truth to all great powers without exception.
As I have argued before, Fiji cannot afford to be led by the nose by Canberra’s strategic anxieties or any other external agenda. Genuine partnership requires the courage to say no, to chart an independent course, and to insist that Fiji’s foreign policy serves the Pasifika family—not the geopolitical fears of distant capitals. This is not about confrontation; it is about maturity. About refusing to let anyone else pick sides for us.
The two fronts of this struggle—decolonisation and militarisation—are not separate issues. They are the same fight. Both are about whether Pasifika peoples will govern their own lands and waters, or whether external powers will continue to treat the Pasifika as a resource to be extracted, a playground for their rivalries, and a convenient place to dispose of their waste and their weapons.
The Forum was born from decolonisation. Its purpose was to reclaim agency, assert identity, and build something genuinely owned by Pasifika peoples. That purpose remains urgent today. The great powers will continue to compete, offer aid, seek alliances, and jostle for influence. But our task is not to choose between them. It is to remain united around our priorities, speak with our voice, and insist that our future be shaped by us—for us.
Fiji must lead—boldly, consistently, and in service of all Pasifika peoples. The MSG has placed decolonisation back on the table. Civil society has demanded a principled stance on militarisation. The question is whether the Forum’s leaders will rise to the occasion or continue to tiptoe around the hard issues. The ocean has always been our home. Let us govern it as ours. And let that governance begin with the courage to finish the work of decolonisation and to say no to all who treat our waters as their battlefield.
🌊 #PacificWay #Kanaky #Decolonisation #BluePacific #FijiLeadership
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 