A two-day West Papua Solidarity Forum and mini film festival is being held in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau next month featuring West Papuan and local academics, advocates and journalists.

Hosted by West Papua Action Tamaki and West Papua Action Aotearoa, keynote speeches, panels and discussion on the opening day, March 7, will focus on updates from West Papuan speakers from the frontlines and activist/academic contexts with responses and regional perspectives from solidarity groups.

Themes will include military occupation updates, colonial expansion, environmental issues, community organising and human rights abuses, said a statement from the organisers.

Speakers include: Viktor Yeimo (online from West Papua), Dorthea Wabiser, Victor Mambor, Ronny Kareni, Kerry Tabuni, Hilda Halkyard Harawira, Emalani Case, Nathan Rew, Arama Rata, Dr David Robie, Maire Leadbetter, Teanau Tuiono, Te Aniwaniwa Paterson.

The evening event is a public mini festival of Papuan films introduced by journalist and editor Victor Mambor from Jubi Media in Jayapura.

The second day, March 8, is dedicated to solidarity development and relationship building across the region and opportunities to support West Papua in Aotearoa, with cultural and political kōrero and talanoa.

This event is an opportunity for students, community groups, media, unions, academics and activists to learn more about West Papua and the current regional and political context.

A media seminar featuring Victor Mambor and organised by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) will also be held at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub on Monday, March 9.

• Note: The Forum event is being held at two venues — the Auckland University Old Choral Hall, 7 Symonds Street, on Saturday, March 7 (9.00am-4.30pm), and at “The Taro Patch”, 9 Dunnotar Road, Papatoetoe, Auckland (close to train station) on Sunday, March 8  2026(9.00am-4.00pm).
• More details, koha and registration at Humanitix by February 20 2026

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fijian bus drivers and bus checkers wake up early in the morning to serve the public so it is disappointing to see school students harassing and bullying them, says the bus operators industry group.

Fiji Bus Operators Association general secretary Rohit Latchan said he was responding to a recent video on social media involving a high school student threatening a bus checker.

Latchan also pleaded with parents and teachers to teach students respect towards everyone, especially bus drivers and checkers.

“People should realise that bus drivers and checkers are also humans,” Latchan said.

“They’re providing service to the public, especially to students.

“I am pleading with parents and teachers to respect and appreciate bus drivers and checkers. There is no need for abuse or threats.

“Driving all day is not an easy job. We don’t want our drivers to get hurt.”

Closed fist threat
The video shows the student threatening a bus driver and a bus checker saying, ‘Au sega ni rerevaki kemudrau’ (I am not afraid of you) after he got on board with a closed fist.

Although it is unclear what caused the incident, many found the issue of a young student challenging adults alarming.

Acting Police Commissioner Juki Fong Chew said the matter had been directed to the Central Deputy Police Commissioner for investigations and a team would visit the school tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Education Secretary Selina Kuruleca said all necessary processes had been followed, including informing parents and the Child Protection Services.

“We again request parents to remind their children on the importance of proper behaviour at all times,” Kuruleca said.

“Even though the student was responding to some earlier incident by the driver, he could have reported the incident to the police instead of this swearing and threatening behaviour.

“The student is undergoing counselling at the moment.”

Temalesi Vono is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

There was euphoria at the campus of the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva in Fiji last Thursday when news came from New York that a historic resolution on climate action had been adopted unanimously at the United Nations General Assembly.

The resolution refers to the International Court of Justice case that would result in an advisory opinion clarifying nations’ obligations to tackle the climate crisis and the consequences they should face for inaction that could be cited in climate court cases in the future.

The campaign for the landmark resolution, supported by more than 130 member countries, started its journey in 2019 when a group of final-year law students conceived the project as an extra-curricular activity known as “learning by doing” on USP’s international environmental law course at their campus in Port Vila in Vanuatu.

An elated Dr Justin Rose, adjunct associate professor of law and coordinator of the 2019 class where the campaign originated, told University World News from New York where he had joined his former students for the UN vote that it was any lecturers dream to see such results achieved by the students he had guided.

“Teaching and learning about climate change and climate change governance can increasingly be somewhat depressing — I teach what are essentially the same problems, and the same proposed but unimplemented solutions, that were taught to me at ANU [Australian National University] in 1992 when I studied the course I now coordinate.

“Those same problems and solutions have been ignored for so long that catastrophic climate impacts are occurring,” notes Rose.

Then in 2019 he set up an extra-curricular exercise that students could volunteer for.

A different skillset
“There were 20 participants from a class of 140,” he said, recalling how the project started.

“It was a way to teach a different skillset to those interested in doing some extra work and to empower them to do something positive about climate change.

“The exercise was, firstly, to discuss among the group the most productive legal action Pacific island countries could initiate within international law, and secondly to prepare letters and a brief that could be sent to PIF [Pacific Island Forum] leaders seeking to persuade them to implement it,” explained Rose.

When, at the annual summit meeting of the PIF leaders in 2019, the leaders only “noted” the proposal, the students did not give up but instead formed an organisation — Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) — to start what soon became a global youth campaign for an International Court of Justice climate change opinion.

Their key objective was to convince the governments of the world to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice answering a question that would develop new international law integrating legal obligations around environmental treaties and basic human rights.

They were soon joined by the World’s Youth for Climate Justice.

The world ‘has listened’
“We are just ecstatic that the world has listened to the Pacific youth and has chosen to take action. From what started in a Pacific classroom four years ago,” noted Cynthia Houniuhi, the Solomon Islands-based president of PISFCC, who was one of the original law students at USP that initiated the project.

“We in the Pacific live the climate crisis. My home country Solomon Islands is struggling. Through no fault of our own, we are living with devastating tropical cyclones, flooding, biodiversity loss and sea-level rise.

“The intensity and frequency of it is increasing each time. We have contributed the least to the global emissions that are drowning our land,” said Houniuhi in a statement released from New York.

“The vote in the United Nations is a step in the right direction for climate justice.”

The International Court of Justice will now hold hearings and hear evidence on the obligations of states in respect to climate change, with a view to handing down an advisory opinion in 2024.

A favourable opinion should make it easier to hold polluting countries legally accountable for failing to tackle the climate emergency, possibly with compensatory payments given to victim countries.

“This isn’t the end of our campaign for climate justice. The court process will unfold, taking evidence from around the world,” said Vishal Prasad, a campaigner for PISFCC and a graduate from USP in politics and law.

“The real work begins in applying whatever the court advisory opinion says in domestic law, especially in countries that continue to drive the climate crisis with their toxic emissions.”

Merilyn Temakon, an assistant lecturer in legislation and intellectual property law at USP, said: “I am very proud indeed of these students as one of their leaders is Solomon Yeo whom I had the privilege of teaching.

“I was invited on one or two occasions to sit in the main conference room at Emalus (Vanuatu campus) and to listen to their presentations on the effect of climate change,” she recalls.

“At that time there were only a few active members, but now the whole of the PICs [Pacific Island Countries] and half the globe are behind their submission.”

Countries face escalating losses
USP politics and international affairs Associate Professor Sandra Tarte, who sent out an email to all colleagues on March 30 saying “Colleagues, we did it”, told University World News that the resolution emerged out of “mounting frustration at the mismatch between the global community’s rhetoric and action on climate change amid escalating losses for countries such as Vanuatu, which face an existential threat due to sea-level rise”.

The frustration spawned a social movement led by Vanuatu law students turned youth activists, and work on the resolution was led by Indigenous lawyers in the Pacific, she said.

Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau, speaking after the vote at the UN General Assembly, said: “Today we have witnessed a win for climate justice of epic proportions. Vanuatu sees today’s historic resolution as the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate cooperation.”

Solomon Yeo, one of the students involved in the initial project at USP, who was part of Vanuatu’s delegation to the UN General Assembly meeting, argues that securing the resolution demonstrates that Pacific youth can play a part in tackling climate change.

“Today we celebrate four years of arduous work in convincing our leaders and raising global awareness of the initiative,” he told Radio New Zealand, speaking from New York.

“The adopted resolution is a testament that Pacific youth can play an instrumental role in advancing global climate action [and] young people’s voices must remain an integral part of the process.”

“We are enormously proud of everything our alumni at PISFCC have achieved,” said USP vice-chancellor and president Professor Pal Ahluwalia in a statement.

“These are exactly the kind of high-achieving publicly minded graduates that we aim to produce.”

Dr Kalinga Seneviratne is consultant lecturer with the University of the South Pacific journalism programme based in Suva. This article was first published by University World News and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New research details the extent of racism, othering and tokenism faced by Māori and Pacific postgraduate students in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The paper, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, was based off responses of 43 Māori and Pacific students in science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) subjects.

Many of the respondents detailed being made to feel out of place, having their place at university questioned, or being made a token representative for funding applications.

In one instance, one Māori student’s name was added to a funding application by the faculty despite them expressly saying “no”.

“My name (my mana and reputation) was used against my will to secure funding for a project that I refused multiple times to be part of,” one participant said.

Lead researcher Dr Tara McAllister of the University of Auckland told RNZ Nine to Noon there were a lot of shocking stories.

“Every time I read people’s responses to the question I had to kind of mentally prepare myself for reading, you know, really horrific experiences of racism and all the kind of other things that go with that,” she said.

Students felt alienated
The survey results pointed to students who often felt alienated by the assumptions of colleagues, or isolated as the only Māori or Pacific student in the building; students whose very place in the university was often questioned.

“Sometimes … people make comments that we are only where we are because we are Pacific people,” another participant said.

Māori and Pacific academics make up less than 5 percent and 2 percent respectively of all academics.

To combat this, many universities have been trying to increase the number of Māori and Pacific students in the institutions.

But another of the researchers, Dr Sereana Naepi, said that would do little to keep those students in academia, and the very structure of the academy needed to change to be more culturally accommodating.

“We haven’t taken on the structures that make people leave the system and so that’s really what we’re talking about: how do these different experiences help us to understand how the structures at play make Māori and Pacific choose not to enter the academy or enter the research workforce,” she said.

Dr McAllister said many rangatahi surveyed said they felt alone and isolated, but all the responses showed that their experiences were not isolated.

“I hope they read our paper and feel less isolated knowing that we’re doing this work to try and change things and knowing their negative experience may have been less isolated.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz