A Look Back at the Pacific Regional Seminar

Since 1990, the Special Committee on Decolonization (or C24) has held regional seminars to assess progress in implementing the action  plans related to the International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism. The period 2021-2030 marks the fourth decade of the action plan.

 Impacts of the Covid-19 Crisis 

This year's regional seminar for the Pacific had as its main theme "the promotion of non-self-governing territories during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond". The opportunity for Mickaël Forrest, representing the Executive, to outline the impacts of the health crisis in New Caledonia.

he detailed the measures taken by the Government to respond to the crisis, emphasizing the importance of partnerships during this period. The mobilization of "civil society, which supported us in setting up local vaccination sites, and the support of the French government with "the dispatch of the health reserve and vaccines" were also praised.

He also mentioned the essential actions of cooperation and regional solidarity initiated with Fiji, Vanuatu, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna during the epidemic period.

As it was the case  all over the world, the health crisis  had heavy financial and budgetary consequences, to which have been accentuated by the current state of global affairs. Mickaël Forrest had the opportunity to explain some of the initiatives implemented by the Government to remedy this situation, such as the fiscal programming or the measures to fight inflation, recently adopted by the Executive.

Mickaël Forest outlined the Government management of the Health Crisis during the Regional Seminar. 

The UN as a Key Partner

 Since it was reinstated  on the list of non-self-governing territories, like 16 other countries, in 1986, New Caledonia has had the opportunity to speak through the voice of several of its representatives, about the issues related to its institutional future.

For the Minister, the meeting in St. Lucia has allowed to identify the various levers, including legal ones, offered by the UN bodies to support New Caledonia at the end of its  process of emancipation and decolonization.

According to Mickaël Forrest, the Special Committee on Decolonization should "play the role entrusted to it by the General Assembly. The UN represents a key support for the territory "in the perspectives that we must engage in  with the United Nations, the French Government  and all the New Caledonian actors, to find a dynamic which will allow  us dynamics  to emerge serenely from the Nouméa Agreement" he said. 

 Mickaël Forrest also announced the arrival in New Caledonia of a mission of the Special Committee on Decolonization, scheduled for the second half of this year. This will be the third visit of this kind  since 2014.