Results for Pacific Islands

This Sunday September 28 is 'International Right to Know Day'; a chance to highlight the right to information and to remember how important this right is for the fulfilment of all human rights. By Claire Cronin

A new Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot scheme was discussed by an Australian five-members delegation who were in Tonga last week and have completed their first round trip to the four participating island countries.

The Fiji interim Minister of Education, Filipe Bole, has declared a strike by nearly 400 staff of the regional University of the South Pacific "illegal".

No-one in Fiji has any illusion that the military take-over of an elected government in December 2006 was legal: it comprised the fourth coup in just under twenty years. The bases for Fiji's coups differ and so have international reactions to them.

The Australian Government is introducing a new three-year Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme to four Pacific Island countries to work in the horticulture industry in regional Australia.

A TONGA Coronation Fellowship was the New Zealand government's coronation gift for Tonga.

Pacific leaders would be flexible about an extension to the agreed deadline for a general election in Fiji, said the Pacific Islands Forum Chairman, Tonga's Prime Minister, Hon. Dr Feleti Sevele.

The introduction of a Pacific Islands Labour Mobility Scheme to Australia is still a possibility for this year but no direction has been made on when it might take place.

Of all the Pacific Islands Forum members, China only gives aid to the eight countries that recognise it. Of those countries Tonga is one of the largest recipients of Chinese aid pledges in both overall and per capita terms. That is interesting because Tonga has one of the smallest populations of the eight countries and has few resources of interest to China. By Fergus Hanson