Pacific Islands Treaties

I came across the Pacific Islands Treaty Series (with the wonderful acronynm PITS) this morning and I thought it would be of interest to SLAWers. The collection covers the 21 countries and territories in the Pacific. There are 14 countries, namely, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Northern Mariana’s, Papua New Guinea, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu and 7 territories which are New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna (territories of France), American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam (territories of the United States of America) and Tokelau (territory of New Zealand).

For the purposes of the PITS database, treaties are narrowed down to only include the bilateral and multilateral treaties pertaining to the above-named jurisdictions. A treaty is included in the Pacific Islands Treaty Series because of two possible reasons:

1. One or more Pacific Island state or territory has consented to be a party to that treaty. These are the Global treaties; OR

2. Pacific Islands Regional Treaties being bilateral or multilateral treaties that are contracted to or on behalf of the Pacific Island state(s).

The Global treaties are treaties that are focussed on issues at the international plane. An example the human rights treaties such as – International Human Rights Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Pacific Regional Treaties are mainly bilateral and multilateral treaties whose subject matter is either a Pacific Island country or the subject matter is an issue that directly affects a Pacific country. For example, a treaty which directly affects a Pacific country is “ Australia , New Zealand and United Kingdom ’s Agreement over the Trust Fund for Tuvalu ” and the latter would be “Nuclear Free Pacific Zone Treaty.”