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Wilson, Keith -- Restoring the Rule of Law in International Affairs:- The Pacific Zone- Legal issues in regional security [2007] IHLRes 4 (28 June 2007)

Last Updated: 19 November 2007

Restoring the Rule of Law in International Affairs: The Pacific Zone – legal issues in regional security

Keith Wilson, GRIP Consultants

Fifteenth Annual ANZSIL Conference, 28-30 June 2007, Panel 3

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the concept of ‘international law restoration’ affects security-related developments in countries in regions neighbouring Australia and New Zealand, particularly the islands of the Pacific region.^[1]

Of course, one question that could be asked is whether the assumed weakening of the rule of law in international affairs has had any effect at all upon smaller island countries, or whether the whole storm has passed them by, as in the proverbial teacup: they have just gone on as before, or they have had more pressing problems of their own to address. It might even be argued that the lowering of the international bar, as it were, coupled with the recent vigorous and more selective focus of larger, influential nations on issues such as terrorism, has had an ‘enlivening’ effect on these smaller countries in terms of their level of engagement on international security-related issues.

While something of a mixed picture does emerge, the overall impression is one of weaker rule of law in international affairs being reflected in a weaker rule of law in the islands of the Pacific, with issues broadly related to security representing a significant part of the equation. Regionally-based efforts are under way to redress that situation, and have seen some success, but may in the end be insufficient to do so alone, in the absence of complementary developments at both the international and the domestic levels. This paper seeks to assess the validity of the general impression, in which superficially simple interactions belie a more complex set of considerations. In essence, the argument goes along the lines that: “If the top-down and bottom-up mechanisms are strengthened, the regional mechanisms which are evolving in the Pacific will have a much greater chance of success”.

This is to say, the relationship between the state of international law and the state of security in individual sovereign nations in the Pacific region is not an exact one, far from it, nor even a necessary, direct or causal one, but it cannot be ignored that a number of regionally-specific red or amber lights are flashing at the same time as the ‘rule of law’ issue in international affairs is under scrutiny. And there are a number of regionally-specific factors which may prompt us to be both curious and concerned.

The Pacific island countries: ‘faraway places’

As subjects of international law, the status of some smaller, fragile countries, as well as some larger ones, as effective, functioning States can be a little tenuous at times. A dozen Pacific island countries (or ‘PICs’) are members of the United Nations, including Papua New Guinea with a population of more than 5 million (greater than New Zealand’s), and Nauru and Tuvalu with populations of only about 10,000, with all but a few of the other PICs having between about 50,000-200,000. There are also two very small non-UN members, the Cook Islands and Niue, which are nevertheless recognized by the UN as capable of taking treaty actions on their own account, and which both have done so in a number of different areas (the Cook Islands somewhat more than Niue, though Niue has been active recently).

Apart from the question of size, a major issue faced by the PICs more generally, as it relates to the whole question of international law, is still in many respects the problem, as a former French president once remarked in a different context, of being ‘faraway places’ (pays lointains). And not only are they faraway places, because of their remoteness and often very small size they are often places lacking in sufficient human, financial and other resources: (a) to significantly influence either the weakening or the ‘restoration’ of the international rule of law; or (b) to give content, meaning and effect to international law - unless there is to be something more closely resembling a ‘renaissance’ in international affairs, and not merely a ‘restoration’.

It should be acknowledged that there have been exceptions in the past in response to externally driven events – for example, the normative and precedential effects of the Treaty of Rarotonga to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the South Pacific. However, most of the recent security-related efforts in the region have been connected to internally-driven security issues.

‘Engagement’ levels and breakdowns

Issues of poor governance, insecurity and instability can arise in small countries where certain developments may have greater consequences than in other places – whether it is because a revered figure dies, or a dubious individual is given greater influence, or a fugitive is allowed to slip through the net, or a criminal activity (drugs/amphetamines, money laundering, corruption, illegal fishing, logging etc) is able to be carried out without detection, or with much less than perfect avenues for prosecution or enforcement cooperation. Recent examples abound, including the Julian Moti case, Peter Foster, coups, riots, Fiji, Solomons, Tonga, PNG, Vanuatu etc.

Moreover, the breakdown in the ability of many small island nations to connect to whatever is the current state of the rule of law in international affairs and treaty development may occur at one or more of several stages in the process, including when:

• Engaging/Negotiating;

• Adopting/Signing;

• Ratifying/Acceding;

• Legislating/Regulating;

• Implementing/Enforcing;

• Cooperating/and thereby strengthening the international rule of law

Pacific islands face major problems in international affairs in terms of their ability to participate meaningfully in the negotiation of international legal norms likely to affect them. Few have overseas representation in more than a handful of places outside the region (if that) - in New York it is often only for part of the year, or with one country maintaining a presence on behalf of several others, while in London and continental Europe it is patchy at best, and the missions that are established cannot hope to cover many of the major negotiating forums in more than a cursory manner.

The Pacific Islands Forum has observer status in the UN and APEC, and a few international organizations, such as the WTO, have at least recognized the problem by fostering greater possibilities for shared representation by Pacific (as well as Eastern Caribbean) nations. An article by Chakriya Bowman from the ANU Asia-Pacific School of Economics and Government describes the WTO initiative on its web-site. Bowman quotes Greg Urwin, Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat who said in 2004: “It seems to me impossible to deny that enhanced regional co-operation and pooling of resources is required”.^[2] However, there are greater difficulties, and less than wholehearted international support, for Pacific nations giving effect to international obligations through cooperative regional implementation mechanisms such as regional reporting – a hangover of the sovereignty issue.

Moreover, at the stage of joining international legal and treaty-based regimes, whether signing and ratifying or acceding to them, small island countries are often less engaged or, if somewhat engaged or motivated (eg by signing) are often slower and less prepared to move to full membership. This is the case even if they are amongst the earliest to ratify. For example, Fiji at a certain stage was amongst the fastest to go through the signature and ratification process for certain treaties, sometimes simultaneously, but with few if any significant steps being taken in readiness for the legal consequences of those actions.

These issues deserve mention here regarding levels of ‘engagement’ – this paper also addresses issues of legislation, implementation, enforcement and cooperation below – because in the area of international legal instruments in security, disarmament and related fields, a number of developments over the past decade are potentially revealing: these constitute a fairly representative sample of about two dozen treaties, including nearly a dozen international organizations covering weapons of mass destruction (WMD), narcotics, customs, hazardous substances and chemicals, international humanitarian law, conventional weapons, land mines, international criminal court, transnational organized crime and major recent counter-terrorism treaties on the suppression of bombings and of the financing of terrorism.^[3]

While it may be difficult to prove conclusively that simply because a country is small, or its economy fragile, or it faces serious conflict or tensions, and governance and national rule of law deficiencies, therefore it is invariably less engaged in international affairs or feels less bound by international law (or the flip-side argument that when the international rule of law is itself under pressure, countries in those categories are themselves left more exposed to the vicissitudes of security threats and gaps in governance and the rule of law), one indicator at least seems clear:

Among the nearly 200 nations throughout the world, the Pacific island countries are positioned at the lower end of the table in terms of their membership of major multilateral treaties and regimes in these fields. Of the 65 ‘least engaged’ countries (or the bottom third on that measure), all 14 of the PICs are in that group (including 12 in the bottom 40, or 20%, of countries). In fact, more than half of this bottom 20% are amongst the smallest countries in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the Pacific – so there appears to be a shared experience there – while the others include countries such as North Korea, Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar, Somalia, Syria and Zimbabwe.

Of some note also is that, while most of the rest of the world has been maintaining or steadily increasing, in relative terms, its binding ‘level of engagement’ with the international rule of law in these spheres of activity, other countries which have slipped into or remain in the bottom third include Egypt, Iran, Israel, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.^[4]

This serves to illustrate where the rule of law in international affairs appears ‘least engaged or bound’ at the present time (and at this point I would not be suggesting that this is the same as being ‘least observed’). Nevertheless, the interaction may have a part to play in terms of the impact that a lack of engagement on the part of major and certain specially affected States may have upon the observance of the rule of law in international affairs by certain other ‘less engaged’ countries in particular, including those mentioned in regions of major security concern, as well as some smaller and more fragile States, such as those in the Pacific region.

There is a strong argument for an approach to international law and its implementation based on pulling other countries along, and not simply pushing them towards an outsider’s desired objective, (though there needs to be care that it does not become a “Dr Dolittle” effect, or “Pushmi-pullyu” effect!) Of course, the 64,000 dollar question (or considerably more in today’s dollars) is how best to achieve a productive outcome on the engagement question? It is one thing to talk of perceived injustices or weaknesses, and quite another to come up with a workable solution.

A final observation to make in relation to this sample of international legal instruments monitored, is to note that New Zealand^[5] was among the very first countries to become ‘fully engaged’ with all two dozen regimes under consideration.^[6] To the extent that these observations in one selected sector may or may not be part of a broader trend, it may also be noted positively that Australia appeared to embark on a period of ‘restoration’ of its status from about 2002 onwards, and became ‘complete’ again, in relation to the surveyed treaties, within a couple of years. Whether this may be somewhat surprising, or not surprising at all, it should rate at least a mention, because we are ANZSIL, because Australia and New Zealand are also members of the Pacific Islands Forum, and because it may have something to say in relation to the 14 PICs – the developing island countries – and the question of the potential impact of rule of law developments in international affairs on issues more directly affecting countries in our region, including on security-related issues.

Pacific regionalism

The Pacific region itself presents a microcosm, or a number of microcosms, that have responded to the ‘phenomenon’ of international law in a rather particular way. For a start, through the efforts of regional institutions, most notably the Pacific Islands Forum, the rule of law in international affairs, especially as regards the security field, has been ‘received’ by countries in the region in a more marked fashion through the medium of regional instruments, conventions, declarations, communiqués, principles and so on. The recent Pacific Plan of October 2005 is the latest attempt to take it to the next level, with issues of good governance and regional security being two of the four key areas identified. That said, the rule of law at the national level, and what is sometimes referred to as the ‘domestication’ of international law (and potentially a more descriptive term than simple ‘implementation’) has a lot of catching up to do.

As far as those regional mechanisms are concerned, the framework for regional security and law enforcement cooperation is provided by instruments such as the Honiara Declaration of 1992, the Biketawa Declaration of 2000 and the Nasonini Declaration of 2002, amongst others including the Aitutaki Declaration of 1997 and the Auckland Declaration of 2004, and sectoral security laws, such as PICASST on aviation. This framework has had some success in addressing certain security crises and issues of good governance in the region, through specific invocations of the Biketawa Declaration for the establishment of RAMSI in the Solomon Islands and PRAN in Nauru, as well as election observer missions in Bougainville, the Solomon Islands and Fiji.

While some of these regional mechanisms are, in part at least, a response to global developments, most of them are primarily regional responses to local and regional issues which accept (eg RAMSI), implicitly if not always explicitly, that a global response to rule of law issues, at the level of the UN or otherwise, would be too slow, would be ineffective, or not forthcoming at all. To this extent, regional mechanisms are filling a gap rather than simply translating international rule of law first to the regional level and thereafter to the national level. Assistance has also been forthcoming from regional organizations and development partners.

The implementation of the Pacific Plan will be crucial, but can it be sufficient? Last year’s Forum Communique stated that: “Paramount was that of fully translating the regional initiatives being developed into plans and follow-up actions at the national level”.^[7] Priority areas and key commitments for the current year are annexed in the Nadi Decisions on the Pacific Plan.^[8] However, of the 19 listed points, only two relate to good governance (including implementation of human rights conventions) and only one to security issues (incorporating the work of FRSC and other regional bodies and “including a focus on broader political and human security issues and the need to match them with national efforts”).^[9] The Communique itself, as it has previously with other treaties, encouraged universal adoption of the CTBT.^[10]

In short, regionally-based developments are proving to be a mix of conduit, instigator, and matchmaker, in support of progress on the rule of law in Pacific island countries, but they cannot hope of themselves to replace the need for progress on rule of law developments at either of the international or national levels.

Other panels will address the good governance aspects in particular cases and in greater detail. However, in focusing on the rule of law in international affairs, we cannot ignore the fact that good governance, or more specifically poor governance at the national level, underpins so much of what is being discussed here. I attended a recent public forum on “The Business of Aid – creating partnerships and combating corruption” – it is sobering to note that corruption is estimated to cost US$1 trillion annually, or 10 times total global overseas development assistance.^[11] Corruption is a consequence of poor governance, it sharpens inequalities, worsens poverty, hampers even reverses economic growth, leads to widespread dissatisfaction, and instability (examples of areas of vulnerability include audits showing huge ‘losses’ in Solomon Islands logging revenues). Top-down inquiries are shown to be too simplistic, and are ineffective responses to corruption. It has also been suggested that improvements in the rule of law and the reduction of corruption can lead to up to 4-fold increases in national incomes.^[12] Where does the international lawyer fit into this picture?

Implementation, domestication and ‘non-traditional’ threats

I have referred to issues at the negotiation/engagement level. It is also apparent that many countries in the Pacific region lack the human, technical and financial resources to fully or adequately comply with their international legal obligations. Levels of engagement on international issues, while increasing in specific areas, have fluctuated through waves of security crises in a number of island countries in the region. National implementation efforts, in administration and enforcement in particular, have also been uneven. Focus is lost. This combination of limited capacity and ongoing security threats and disturbances impacts the rule of law, by relegating international law considerations to a lower and uncertain place in the lists of national priorities.

With the world now facing global threats, alongside global opportunities, international legal responses sit awkwardly beside localised risks and national interests. One distracts the other. In addition, regional power politics and perceptions complicate the process, and risk weakening links and networks in the area of legal cooperation. The most recent coup in Fiji, and the continuing political fallout from those developments, as well as the ongoing RAMSI commitment, are understandably occupying a lot of regional resources at the moment, including through the Forum Secretariat.

However, in terms of national rule of law capacities and national priorities in the PICs more generally, Forum Secretary-General Greg Urwin, in opening the 2006 Forum Regional Security Committee (FRSC) meeting^[13] referred to what he described as the Secretariat’s “suite of what seems to me to be very good model legislation covering priority areas identified under the Honiara Declaration and more recently issues related to terrorism”.^[14] He continued:

“The rate of utilization of these legislative models has been patchy with only a few Forum members actually adopting or implementing a version adapted to local needs...The Secretariat and its partners in capacity development will continue to provide, as requested, in country drafting and implementation assistance for this important suite of legislation, but we need to go into this further.”^[15]

How? What new avenues could be explored? Model legislation has been developed in areas including transnational organized crime, regional customs legislation, anti money-laundering legislation, WMD non-proliferation and so on. Assistance providers, legislative drafters, international organizations and treaty implementers have been working in countries throughout the region, and that is likely to intensify.

One key lies in the phrase ‘a version adapted to local needs’. Just sending an off-the- shelf model is not sufficient when the capacity does not exist. Legislation needs to be tailored, and developed side-by-side with local stakeholders, identifying who can be expected to be involved in working with legislation, to get it passed, to bring it into effect, and to manage the responsibilities provided for under the legislation on an ongoing basis. The main issue is that in many of the PICs there are just not very many people available, let alone with the knowledge, to carry this out, and periods of high turnover, restructuring and so on are major disruptive factors in this process.^[16]

Restoring the rule of law in international affairs, like the question of good governance in the region, is very much a partnership issue, inviting the bona fides of the international community. The Pacific is a region with a broad concept of security encompassing many of the ‘non-traditional’ security threats – health pandemics such as AIDS ,^[17] ‘kastom’ and cultural values, land ownership issues, human security, gender equality and advancement of women, including the role of women in peacebuilding^[18], and also affected by ecological destruction, from fishing, logging, mining, pollution and climate change.^[19]

Some PICs, such as PNG and the Solomon Islands, present more complex challenges. Others will be speaking on these matters and on broader issues of governance. While ethnic divides and military involvement still play out in Fijian politics, the rule of law weaknesses in the other two countries are tied to a much greater degree to various resources (eg timber, minerals, oil, oil palm, fisheries) and the geography of political and economic zones of influence.^[20] Other “non-traditional” security threats are also prominent, including land issues,^[21] and pollution as “a risk factor that goes to regional security, rather than the environment.^[22] Forum Leaders have also identified “assured long-term energy security” as important, due to the vulnerability of small island economies to increased oil prices.^[23] A wide-ranging article by Christopher Richter in the 2004 Journal of South Pacific Law also surveys views expressed regarding regional security cooperation mechanisms, their ‘unrealised potentials’, their successes as well as their limitations, including in respecting sovereignty sensitivities and the norm of non-intervention,^[24] as well as international developments (with their own limitations) regarding the ‘responsibility to protect’^[25] and the recent heightened global attention to reducing the risks of terrorism.

Clearly, the present discussion is not only about terrorism. Suffice it to say that the threat of terrorism has a different appearance in the Pacific Zone. While the possibility of full-scale terrorism cannot be excluded, the risk arises more from the scope for Pacific island countries unwittingly to provide temporary safe havens, or transit zones, for criminal activities with the potential to give some sort of material support to terrorism.^[26] The gun culture in some countries such as PNG and the Solomons (compare the ‘soft’ response of the international community to date on the small arms and light weapons issue), vast maritime and porous land borders, weapons and people smuggling, thinly spread, incompletely resourced detection capabilities, poor governance, the impact of corruption and transnational criminal activities in both licit (eg resources) and illicit sectors (eg narcotics) all add to that vulnerability.

Inevitably, however, in the Pacific Zone it comes back time and again to a question of capacity, and the need to reduce and simplify to what is applicable and manageable for Pacific countries, where terrorism is a subsidiary consideration, a sub-set of national governance and rule of law considerations. As potential safe havens or transit zones for terrorist (or global criminal) activity, the global war may enter the region before the rule of law is stabilised and entrenched, but if the region reasserts its credentials as a zone of peace (as a ‘law-zone’ rather than a war zone) the global reach of the terror war (terror as the absence of law) can be considerably limited.

Conclusion: building a Pacific ‘law-zone’

How can you build a ‘law-zone’? The authors of the 2002 study “Rule of Power or Rule of Law?” present the case that “[I]nternational security can best be achieved through coordinated local, national, regional and global actions and cooperation”.^[27] They recognise that each element has its imperfections, that multilateralism is an important tool “to meet extremely serious challenges”^[28] and “that the rule of law depends on voluntary compliance by the majority”^[29]. In the Pacific Zone, it seems that the regional element in the past decade has been catching up with and, from necessity, has got out ahead in some respects from the global (in the sense of multilateral) and national implementation elements.

Other regional bodies, including non-Forum bodies such as the Pacific Islands Law Officers Meeting/Network (PILOM/PILON) are also being reinvigorated, supported by the University of the South Pacific and the Forum Secretariat, including through an Action Plan on Sustainable Legislative Drafting Capacity Building, which was endorsed by PILON in February this year in Kiribati. The first Pacific Islands Legal Drafters Technical Forum is being held this week at USP Law School in Vanuatu, sponsored by the Commonwealth Secretariat and prepared by the New Zealand Office of Parliamentary Counsel.^[30]

On the international law front, another regional initiative is the Pacific Islands Treaty Series or “PITS” being developed through the PacLII (the Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute) website, again housed at USP Law School in Vanuatu. PITS is still evolving, and the basic treaty status information is not yet complete in a number of cases. And while it does include a field entitled “domestication”, this mainly includes information regarding legislative acts approving adoption of a treaty, and not implementing legislation.^[31]1 I have also had preliminary discussions regarding possibilities for an enhancement of this on-line service, provisionally titled “PITCH”, or Pacific Islands Treaties Clearing House, that could operate as an international law implementation or “domestication” chat-room and Wikipaedia-style intranet for Pacific countries grappling with the requirements of various international treaties and organisations.

Another trend I have had the opportunity to observe recently is the enthusiasm of the much-maligned ‘Generation Y’, as well as ‘Generation X’, to realise the potential of technology, including for positive purposes, when they sense that they might make a difference. Of course international law, regional interventions and so on, and technology alone, they cannot solve every national problem – and there is a keen awareness of the risk of creating false expectations, with RAMSI, for example. However, international law in the Pacific islands would benefit from fresh approaches. There is an emerging pool of talent willing to take on issues to strengthen the rule of law in the region,^[32] and to embrace international principles appropriately translated into local legal systems.

In my view, this will only succeed on two conditions. First, legal cooperation and capacity-building must address specific local concerns side-by-side with international priorities, to enable international law to develop and flourish within a context. Effective legal cooperation provides the essential threads to redress the balance, and to inject practical and positive perspectives on the relevance to the region of international mechanisms, and of international law. However, recent examples (eg Moti, Foster, illegal fishing, drugs prosecutions) illustrate the patchiness of legislative and cooperative measures. In a region more affected to date by ‘non-traditional’ security threats, the compartmentalisation, or selective combination, of security- related issues (WMD proliferation, terrorism, corruption, environmental or economic disruption) at the international level results in disconnected, partial and half-hearted national responses

Secondly, a new generation of international lawyers (generation ‘Y’, ‘Z’?) will only give substance to international law in its application to regional developments if international law is itself modernised, or at least ‘unburdened’. This may be _{achievable in small jurisdictions with a history of regional dialogue, and with a degree} of legal commonality amidst cultural differences and local customary practices.^[33]

^[1] A similar discussion of the international security-related instruments discussed here might address the situation in other regions, such as South-East Asia, South Asia or the Middle East for example, which present their own dynamics and peculiarities, but this paper is confined, for the most part, to the ‘Pacific Zone’

^[2] Chakriya Bowman, ‘Managing the Challenges of WTO Participation: Case Study 33 – The Pacific Islands Nations: Towards Shared Representation’, www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/case33_e.htm, at page 4, referring to Greg Urwin, ‘Globalisation and its impact on the Pacific Islands Region’, presentation at the Reserve Bank of Fiji Symposium, 15-16 June 2004
^[3] Treaties and organisations surveyed include: the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), IAEA Statute, Partial Test-Ban Treaty (PTBT), Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), 1925 Geneva Protocol, Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), 1988 United Nations Narcotics Convention, Ottawa Land-Mines Convention, World Customs Organisation (WCO), World Trade Organisation (WTO), World Customs Organisation (WCO), the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, the 1977 Protocols I and II Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1980 Certain Conventional (or ‘Inhumane’) Weapons Convention and its Amended Protocol II and Protocol IV, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2000), and the International Conventions for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings (1997) and of the Financing of Terrorism (1999). Of these, the PICs have achieved universal adherence only as members of the WHO and the CWC
^[4] While the purpose of this discussion is to examine the ‘Pacific Zone’ as a whole, it must be acknowledged that there are differences between the individual PICs, and that some PICs are more engaged than they once were, but they have done so off a low base, and are still lagging behind the rest of the world. Moreover, the treaties and regimes being considered have not been chosen arbitrarily or to give a misleading or deliberately unfavourable impression, but they do not include other treaty instruments (because of the more remote connections – though some other environmental threats are clearly regarded by many as real, if “non-traditional”, security threats) such as the Kyoto Protocol, the Law of the Sea Convention, or human rights instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (which famously still only has 2 non-parties). These, if included, could make some countries’ engagement seem worse, and some (in the Pacific) appear somewhat better.
^[5] As well as Norway.
^[6] Australia’s ‘engagement’, while nearly complete a decade ago, did start to lag behind a little for a few years in the middle of the past decade, coinciding with the beginning of a certain period of concern in some circles over the rule of law in international affairs. During the same period, there was almost no major US multilateral ‘international law engagement activity’ in this field, with the notable exception of counterterrorism-related instruments.

^[7] Thirty-Seventh Pacific Islands Forum, Fiji, 24-25 October 2006, Forum Communique, paragraph 4
^[8] _{Ibid, Annex A, pages 8-9}
^[9] Ibid, page 9
^[10] 2006 Forum Communique, note 2, paragraph 25 (Note: The CTBT is the only one of the two dozen surveyed security and disarmament-related instruments that is not yet in force).
^[11] ‘International alert’, Adelaide, 19 June 2007, supported by World Vision and AusAID.
^[12] The 2003 UN Convention against Corruption is not included in the multilateral treaties and regimes surveyed in this paper (nor the 2005 Convention against Nuclear Terrorism, which only has about 20 parties so far) because the list of treaties and bodies has been kept stable from the year 2001. However, of the nearly 100 parties to the Convention against Corruption, none of the 14 PICs are members, and only PNG has signed it. On the other hand, both the US and Australia have ratified, but New Zealand is yet to do so.
^[13] The 2007 FRSC dates coincided with the 15^th Annual ANZSIL Conference.
^[14] Opening Address by Mr Greg Urwin, Secretary General, Forum Secretariat, Forum Regional
Security Committee Meeting, Nadi, Fiji, 19-20 June 2006, p5
^[15] Ibid
^[16] Another key lies in an informal observation made to the writer by a regional lawyer – and I suspect that this view is more widespread. This concerned the perception that if a PIC needs help to prepare a counter-terrorism law, there is no difficulty in obtaining assistance from the international community. However, if the most pressing local priority during a particular period is the preparation of a another type of law (an example given being a law to control feral animals, such as wild pigs and wild dogs), the PICs have less success in attracting the resources to assist them.
^[17] Eg Security Council Resolution 1308
^[18] _{Eg Security Council Resolution 1328.}
^[19] As well as from wild animals, note 15 above. It could be a productive path to provide assistance with the preparation of particular “non-international” laws, such as to control feral animals in a particular country to build its capacity in an area of local concern, and thereby attract the attention of often the very same people and local resource base which can then be positively predisposed to giving effect to issues of international concern at the local level.
^[20] From countries such as Australia and China. See Brian D. Brunton, “Notes on Papua New Guinea: Law & Development 2006”, paper delivered at the Ingram Colloquiam on International Law and Development, UNSW Faculty of Law, 20^th October 2006, on file with the author.
^[21] Ibid, page 7: “The running crisis in customary land is really a sub-set of the failure to decentralize power to the provinces.”
^[22] Ibid.
^[23] 2006 Forum Communique, supra note 2, at paragraph 6.
^[24] Christopher Richter, Security Cooperation in the South Pacific: Building on Biketawa, Journal of South Pacific Law, Volume 8 2004, Issue 2.
^[25] Ibid, citing International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), “The Responsibility to Protect” (2001), www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/iciss-ciise/pdf/commission -report.pdf
^[26] That is, while word travels pretty fast in small island communities, and particularly about the arrival and movements of non-locals, legal enforcement mechanisms are not always readily available or effective, and the awareness of, or connection with, a ‘terrorism overlay’ may not be made
^[27] “Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security- Related Treaties”, eds. N.Deller, A. Makhijani, and J. Burroughs, (Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, April 2002), at page 27
^[28] Ibid, page 26.
^[29] Ibid, page 137.
^[30] Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat Press Statement 63/07, 20^th June 2007, “First Pacific Islands Legal Drafters Technical Forum”, Port Vila, Vanuatu, 26-28^th June 2007: “Good Governance and the Rule of Law are the foundation stones of modern successful societies and economies in the Pacific and around the world. And they are a part of the Pacific Plan,” Katalaina Sapolu, spokesperson for the Commonwealth Secretariat said, “Preparing better legislation is part of Good Governance”. http://www.forumsec.org/pages.cfm.newsroom/press-statements/2007, accessed 23^rd June 2007
^[31] Moreover, this limited information is often only available for Vanuatu at this stage.
^[32] Eg, the revitalized and more transparent Auditor-General function in the Solomon Islands
^[33] See C. Richter, supra n24: “Phrases such as the “arc of instability” are now being used to describe the region that was once considered not only a peaceful part of the world, but also a fine example of democratic governance. However, despite the problems faced by some Pacific Island nations, little has been achieved in terms of security cooperation, notwithstanding the accomplishments of regional organisations in dealing with economic and development issues. One of the greatest criticisms of these organisations in this respect is the lack of institutionalised arrangements to facilitate security cooperation and action. It is therefore of vital importance that the nations of the South Pacific region now come together to create mechanisms to address the threats they face.”