As fighting flares between Indonesian and independence armed forces, West Papuans flee across the border in their thousands into Sepik, PNG.
NZ's Council for International Development's annual conference focussed on humanitarian aid and its relationship with the Pacific Islands. The Council is the national umbrella agency for New Zealand organisations working in international development. The conference's theme was 'New Ways to Work: Stronger Relationships and Resilience.' It wanted to shine a light on how New Zealand's aid sector has changed since Covid, with aid programmes and humanitarian responses more locally led.
Briefs from RNZ Pacific News
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/454401/in-brief-news-from-around-the-pacific
Vanuatu
All government Ministries are closed in Vila today as Covid threat looms and speculation mounts that the capital may soon go into lockdown. This comes after two Covid-19 cases were confirmed on arrival on a flight from New Caledonia. Radio Vanuatu reports that all 18 passengers on the flight were tested in Noumea and cleared before travel to Vanuatu, but the two cases were confirmed during normal border control testing on ardrival in Vila.
New Caledonia referendum
The French Overseas Territories Minister says the government is being vigilant about any risk of destabilisation around the upcoming independence referendum in New Caledonia. With the referendum only six weeks away, AFP reports interference from abroad as a potential risk to the referendum. It's the third and final in a series of self-determination referenda, with the previous two, in 2018 and 2020, producing narrow but decreasing majority votes for the status quo. With only 9,000 votes of difference between the yes and no votes in last year's referendum, interference or possible manipulation by foreign state actors could pose a significant threat.
Vaccination campaign a struggle in rural PNG
Mistrust of vaccines is deep in PNG, where only around 2 percent of the population has been inoculated against Covid, while a Delta-fulled third wave of the pandemic is causing daily casualties.
Terry Dap is one of a handful of policemen in West Sepik province's Telefomin district, covering 16,000 square kilometres, with a population of around 50,000."The health authorities are still struggling to get people to understand, to have them vaccinated. "But they (the public) don't want to get jabbed because they say to the health authorities you have to come down and explain to us what are the effects after they've been vaccinated, what are the effects one year or two years onwards."
Fiji's Covid-19 numbers continue downward trend
There were 16 new cases of Covid-19 and no new deaths yesterday. Figures continue to track down from the peak of the Delta outbreak when new daily case numbers sometimes exceeded 1000 around three months ago. Fiji's total number of cases since the outbreak began in April has just nudged past 52,000. So far in the pandemic, 673 deaths related to the virus have been reported. Some 96.3 percent of the target population - or 595,597 people - has had a first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. and 86.9 percent are fully vaccinated.
Xi talks to PNG's Marape
China's President Xi Jinping says his government stands ready to work with Papua New Guinea to build a shared future for China and Pacific Island nations. During a telephone conversation with PNG's Prime Minister James Marape, Xi noted that the country had important influence in the Pacific islands region. He said he would like the two countries to work together to deal with regional challenges such as climate change, while adhering to multilateralism, and safeguarding international equity and justice.
There were promises of ongoing bilateral exchanges and cooperation in areas such as poverty reduction, resource protection and utilisation, and infrastructure development. The Chinese side said it was willing to continue to provide PNG with economic and technical assistance with no political conditions attached, as well as support for PNG in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
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