Letter from Suva
Myriam Abel Shows What We Should Be Doing
Myriam Abel recently achieved something few from the Pacific Islands have done before. Unfortunately, none of the daily newspapers here in Suva, the so-called hub of the region, thought it was worth a mention.
Abel was elected to chair the executive board of the World Health Organisation (WHO). The 49-year-old Director of Public Health in Vanuatu¹s Ministry of Health will be at the helm of the 32-member executive board for the next two years. This means she heads the executive body of the World Health Assembly. She will play a key role in shaping its budget and programme of work around the world.
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Her election showed just what Pacific Islanders can achieve, if the right people are regularly sent to key international meetings.
But how many other Pacific Islanders are in the same position of international power? How many are serving on key decision making boards or executives of big international organisations like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) or United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to name just a few?
A quick check was quite revealing. UNDP and UNFPA have so far had no Pacific Islands representation in key decision making roles. UNICEF? Well, like UNDP and UNFPA, it does not have any Pacific Islands representation. But neighbours Australia and New Zealand have been represented.
However, the whisper is that there are moves within UNICEF to change that. The whisper is that there's a move to get a Pacific Islander on board because for too long there has been a misconception that Australia and New Zealand represent the interests of the Pacific Islands. The reality is Australia and New Zealand have very little in common with the island countries. They are really Europeanised developed countries who see the world through different eyes to the developing nations of the Pacific Islands.
What about UNESCO? Well, it seems UNESCO is the only major United Nations organisation that regularly includes Pacific Islanders on its executive board. Samoa's Minister for Education, Fiame Naomi Mata¹afa, has been on it for the past four years, and her term is to expire later this year. Another Pacific Islander, Jacques Sese, Vanuatu's education minister, has been nominated by Pacific Islands education ministers to replace Mata'afa.
So why are we in the Pacific generally so poorly represented at these important decision making levels in the major United Nations bodies? What are we doing wrong?
I recall a conversation I had last year with a local who was working for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). This was during a UNESCO-sponsored Education for All conference in Bangkok, part of preparations for the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal.
At that Bangkok conference, there were concerns expressed about our regional contribution, and the fact that some of our countries did not consider the conference important enough to send their top people. Instead they sent people who seemed to know little about what was happening. Of those who were represented by senior people, wellŠ they kept quiet most of the time. The end result ‹ sad to say ‹ was the Pacific Islands region did not get the recognition or the voice it deserved. Our local friend, in trying to explain our mediocre performance, said the region had itself to blame. The comment was: "We don't send our top brass or ministers and we tend to regard these meetings not very important. When we do attend we don't assert ourselves. We need to change our tack and become more aggressive."
A good example of this not so long ago was the session which was to decide the council members of UNESCO's International Programme for the Development of Communication. This is a programme within UNESCO designed to fund and help communication development in the developing world.
There was an outstanding Pacific Islands nominee: Alfred Sasako, of the Solomon Islands. Sasako was specially qualified to give the Pacific Islands, an effective voice on this council, which sets the policies and funding priorities of IPDC.
He had been a leading journalist (in both Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea), a well regarded regional civil servant (with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat), and he had worked inside government (as a minister in the Solomon Islands Prime Minister's office).
But when it came to the crucial hour to vote, guess what? Some of the Pacific Islands representatives were missing from the meeting in Paris (out shopping, according to one account). The Pacific Islands missed out on a place on the IPDC council by just one vote. A classic example of how some of our representatives at these meetings don't seem to understand their responsibilities.
I asked a friend of mine who works for Fiji's foreign ministry, and who attends a lot of international meetings, how we can get better representation at the international level.
One important thing he mentioned was the need for Pacific Islands to work together as a unified voice if the region is to be successful pushing its agenda. Another is the calibre of people we send to represent us. The region's countries need to ensure that they are represented at such meetings by people who know what it is all about and can speak up and participate.
These meetings are much too important for people to be there on shopping trips.
Remember that saying: you've got to understand the system, for the system to work for you.
I saw this in action at the World Education Forum in Senegal. Only a handful of the Pacific Islands were represented by their education ministers: Kiribati, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. Because of this poor representation the Pacific Islands, as a group, were not taken seriously right from the start.
But one energetic and clued up Pacific Islander did show what could be achieved. He was from the Marshall Islands, and he had got himself appointed as one of the rapporteurs, the people who shape the official records of the meeting. He had done this because he was someone who knew his way around such meetings.
He had this advice on how the Pacific Islands should make sure they get the
benefits that can come out of being properly represented:
-We must send people to these meetings who know the system before we can
exploit it to our advantage.
-We need to lobby vigorously while attending meetings because the lobbying
outside of the sessions plays a big role in deciding what happens inside.
-And we need to ensure that there is some continuity in the people we send
to such meetings, so we are represented by people who do know what is going
on and are not out of their depth.
It is advice the governments of our region should listen to. If they do,
there might be less disasters like the Alfred Sasako vote and more successes
like Myriam Abel.
Which will be good for all the countries of our Pacific Islands. Last thought: If those Suva daily newspapers had been a bit more alert about the importance of Myriam Abel's success for the region they might have realised she is part-Fijian.
