Fiji will chair a United Nations working group aimed at increasing Pacific Islands representation in the UN system.
Fiji's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Peter Thomson has been appointed to Chair the working group which is an initiative of the Pacific Small Island Developing States and comprises 11 pacific missions to the UN which include the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
The working group will examine how Pacific Island countries can gain a fairer share of representation on the many councils, committees and organs of the UN.
Following its first meeting in New York on 3rd August, Thomson said the working group was examining the scope of the challenge before and the first task was to prepare a matrix establishing what all the electable bodies, committees and councils were in the UN system.
He said the first principle of the UN is that the organization is based on the sovereign equality of all its members and currently the 11 Pacific Islands represented at the UN are close to 6 percent of the total membership of the UN.
Thompson said their working group is examining the numbers, but he said he doubts the Pacific Islands currently have more than about a 0.3 percent representation in the running of the UN.
Story by: Roneel Lal
