Giff Johnson, Editor, Marshall Islands Journal / RNZ Pacific correspondent
Majuro - In its first parliament session Friday following the vote for the new Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General earlier this week, government and opposition MPs lined up to express unhappiness with the result. But no one advocated pulling out from the regional organization.
The Marshall Islands parliament during its opening session of 2021 in January.
Photo: Eve Burns
The operative word from most of the MPs who spoke Friday in Majuro was for the government to re-assess its relationship with the Forum following the defeat, by a 9-8 vote, of Marshall Islands Ambassador to the US, Gerald Zackios. He was endorsed by all five Micronesian area heads of state as the candidate for the sub-region.
ঢাকা বিমসটেকের মাধ্যমে বঙ্গবন্ধুর আঞ্চলিক স্বপ্ন পূরণ চায় : মোমেন ekushey-tv.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ekushey-tv.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Reimagining Pacific regionalism
A rare conjunction of events is emerging. The events are both directional and prescriptive. The conjunction’s rarity is evocative. The conjunction provides an opportunity for Pacific regionalism (or the Pacific Islands Forum, PIF) to reinvent itself in order to capture the lost grounds it has frittered away since its genesis.
The calendrical end-of-the-year is synergised by institutional, exceptional and wider regional and global events whose essences can additionally incentivise the creative embodiment of the reinvention so needed.
December 2020 brings to an end the services of the incumbent PIFS Secretary General (SG), Dame Meg Taylor. Her replacement will take office in January 2021. The incoming SG’s terms of reference will be set out in the provisions of the 2050 Strategy, currently being compiled. The institutional processes of PIF will ensure fulfillment of that specific objective.
Forum to hold virtual climate summit Forum to hold virtual climate summit Dec 11, 2020
The Pacific Islands Forum will hold a two hour virtual summit tonight, dubbed “Kainaki II to COP 26 - a High-Level Roundtable on Urgent Climate Change Action.”
This week’s online summit comes on the eve of the 5th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the day before a global Climate Ambition Summit 2020, initiated by the United Nations, United Kingdom, and France. With no face to face Forum leaders meeting in 2020, island Presidents and Prime Ministers want to build momentum around the “Kainaki II Declaration for Urgent Climate Change Action Now”, adopted at the 2019 Forum in Tuvalu.
Press Release December 2, 1999
GIVEN GO AHEAD
Canadian officials have agreed to contribute CAD$ 2 million (US$ 1.357 million) more in funding for five new marine projects throughout the South Pacific.
The delegates from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) discussed the projects with their partner regional organizations during a meeting of the Program Management Committee (PMC) for the Canada-South Pacific Ocean Development Program (C-SPOD) held on Friday in Suva, Fiji.
Members of the PMC include the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), the South Pacific Forum Secretariat (ForSec), the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), the University of the South Pacific (USP), and CIDA, which donates funds through C-SPOD to the organizations.