- Last Thursday, PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill created a stir when he spoke out about human rights issues in West Papua. Jenny Hayward-Jones analysed the significance of his speech.
- PNG is facing a major health crisis with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and has set up up an emergency taskforce to tackle what could become an unmanageable national disaster.
- Julie Bishop has announced a three-year assistance package to help fight the disease in PNG.
- In a new report from Brookings, Stacey White examines the important role that regional organisations play in disaster risk-management for the Pacific.
- The Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Dame Meg Taylor, has called for deeper Pacific regionalism in 2015.
- The Fiji Government has tabled a bill to abolish the death penalty from the Republic of Fiji Military Forces act.
- Pacific Island doctors trained in Cuba are struggling to practise medicine in English once they return to their home countries.
- Matrilineal land inheritance in some parts of the Pacific doesn't necessarily mean that women have a say in the use of that land or translate to gender equality.
- Fairfax Media's Indonesia correspondent, Michael Bachelard, recently visited West Papua. His report suggests that Papuans, rather than the Indonesian state, could be responsible for the majority of the region’s problems:
Pacific Island links: West Papua, TB in PNG, disaster risk management and more
Published 11 Feb 2015