Vanuatu will escalate a decades-long dispute with France over two uninhabited islands to international arbitrators.
Vanuatu says independence incomplete without disputed islands
Pacific Waves
Talks between the two countries left everything to be desired on June 30th, with neither country budging on its claim of sovereignty.
The Matthew and Hunter Islands have been controlled by France for decades, even after Vanuatu became independent. But Vanuatu says it will never truly be independent without its Umaenupne and Umaeneag islands, sacred to the Aneityum people.
This impasse became the undoing of “intense” and “heated” talks, as Deputy Prime Minister Johnny Koanapo told reporters on Friday, two weeks after the June meeting.
He said that the sovereignty question would need to be laid to rest by a third party.
“Since independence Vanuatu continues to fight for international recognition that Matthew and Hunter, Umaenupne and Umaeneag, has always belonged to the people of Vanuatu, to our children,” Koanapo said.
He noted that previous negotiations – mediated by Australia in 2018 and the United Kingdom in 2019 – had also come up short.
“Now what remains is for Vanuatu to pursue other legal options available under international law.”
“Let international law, let the International Court of Justice or any arbitration for that matter decide on this … to us what France has done is an insult to us all.”
For Toney Tevi, acting director of the Department of Ocean and Maritime Boundaries, compromise was impossible.
“If you try and say it belongs to France, then I don’t know where Paris is,” he told RNZ Pacific.
“I know it’s Vanuatu’s … it’s a colonial concept when you try and understand, because for us it’s not an ‘understanding’, it’s a part of us.”
Tevi said the impasse amounts to an unsurprising attempt by France to assert colonial power.
“Colonisers will always be colonisers, that’s not something that comes as a surprise. A thief will always be a thief, and he enjoys being a thief.”
“No matter how best you can tell him that a thief is a bad person, as long as he’s got a possession, he feels like he’s doing something right.”
“The moment I try and understand how they think, then I am going to start to think like a colonizer.”
The two islands lie south of Vanuatu and east of the French territory of New Caledonia.
With ownership of the islands, either country would have an extra 350,000 square kilometres added to its Exclusive Economic
Zone (EEZ), according to the ABC.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in a statement that areas of cooperation were also discussed, reiterating its position regarding French sovereignty.
