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The four-day Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Meeting in Honiara, Solomon Islands, concluded on September 12 with a commitment to unity under the banner “Iumi Tugeda” (“We are Together”).

Eighteen Pacific states celebrated new agreements on climate resilience, nuclear-free oceans, labour mobility and political transitions, including Bougainville’s impending independence. Leaders signed the Pacific Resilience Facility treaty, endorsed Fiji’s Ocean of Peace declaration and supported Australia’s proposal to co-host next year’s COP31 climate summit.

Yet the region’s deepest wound remains unhealed. For West Papua, where Indonesian military operations continue to displace tens of thousands, the forum once again offered cautious words and postponed action.

The forum’s final communiqué devoted just a single paragraph to West Papua. It reaffirmed Indonesia’s sovereignty, recalled a six-year-old invitation for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit and vaguely referenced a leaders’ envoy mission planned for next year.

For Papuans, who have been waiting for more than half a century for self-determination, this represented no progress — only the latest ritual of concern without consequence.

Jakarta ignores global voice for West Papua

Since the early 1990s, UN special rapporteurs and treaty bodies have sought access to West Papua. In 2012 and 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression requested a visit, but Indonesia refused.

In 2018, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein stated his office was ready to proceed, but Jakarta’s “invitation” proved illusory.

In 2019, UNHCR Michelle Bachelet reiterated the request amid escalating violence, but no visit materialised.

In 2020 and 2022, UN experts condemned killings and mass displacement, again urging humanitarian access, but nothing changed.

More than 100 UN member states have supported a high commissioner’s visit, yet it has never occurred.

Regional and intergovernmental bodies have echoed this call. Since 2019, the PIF has urged Jakarta to allow UN human rights investigators to enter the country. The Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States has passed a resolution calling for West Papua to be placed on the UN Human Rights Council’s agenda.

The European Union and members of European parliament, as well as churches and civil society groups across Oceania, Africa and Europe, have added their voices and advocated for access.

Jakarta has consistently ignored them.

Journalism silenced, voices suppressed

International media outlets and humanitarian organisations face similar challenges. Despite President Joko Widodo’s 2015 claim that foreign journalists could enter freely, visa restrictions, surveillance and expulsions mean West Papua remains one of the world’s least-reported conflicts.

During mass protests in 2019, Indonesia shut down the internet to suppress information. For more than three decades, Jakarta has blocked and ignored every request for independent scrutiny of atrocities and military operations.

West Papua has some of the world’s richest deposits of gold, copper, timber and biodiversity. These resources generate revenues for Indonesia — Jakarta regards them as non-negotiable assets — and fuel global supply chains. Recognising Papua self-determination would threaten economic control and Jakarta’s narrative of a unitary republic.

The 1969 Act of Free Choice — carried out under military terror and endorsed by the UN — provided only a sham legal basis for Indonesia’s rule. Admitting its flaws would reopen fundamental questions about Indonesia’s claim to West Papua. It is this foundational lie — the theft of Papuan sovereignty — that drives Jakarta’s relentless efforts to block international scrutiny.

Indonesia also calculates that it can disregard external pressure. Powerful neighbours, such as Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, balance occasional concern with deeper security and trade ties. The United States and China prioritise strategic and commercial interests.

Even when UN member states support a high commissioner’s visit, they rarely impose consequences for non-compliance. This has enabled Jakarta to perfect a diplomatic routine: expressing openness, citing the need for “preparation” and then allowing the request to lapse.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ recent visit to Papua New Guinea underscored this silence. He praised Bougainville’s peace process and climate leadership but made no mention of the ongoing conflict just across the border. For Papuans, this silence echoes the UN’s previous failure to rectify the sham referendum it oversaw.

Pacific leaders face their own contradiction. They demand bold global action on climate justice, yet turn a blind eye to political injustice on their own doorstep. They defend state sovereignty but hesitate to uphold the sovereignty of peoples.

The ban on raising the Morning Star flag in Honiara — reportedly due to Indonesian pressure — brought this contradiction into sharp focus. The flag symbolises West Papua’s nationhood, so forbidding it at a summit dedicated to regional solidarity revealed the extent of external influence on Pacific decision-making.

The cost of this selective solidarity is high. It undermines the Pacific’s credibility as a moral voice on climate change and decolonisation, leaving Papuans to endure what they describe as a slow-motion genocide: militarised forests, displaced communities and silenced voices.

West Papua’s foundational place

In the 18th century, Papuan coastal communities resisted Dutch slave raids. In the early 1900s, highland clans fought against punitive patrols enforcing head taxes and forced labour. By the mid-20th century, Papuans were among Oceania’s earliest modern nationalists.

In 1961, they established the New Guinea Council and adopted a national anthem and flag — the Morning Star — years before Samoa gained independence in 1962, Fiji in 1970 and Papua New Guinea in 1975.

However, Cold War bargaining derailed this process. The Netherlands initially transferred administration to a UN Temporary Executive Authority and then to Indonesia. The promised referendum was replaced with the coerced 1969 Act of Free Choice. Despite protests by Papuan delegates and UN staff, the UN endorsed the outcome.

West Papua thus became the first Pacific nation to have its recognised independence revoked. Before this betrayal, Papuan delegates had helped found the South Pacific Conference — the precursor to today’s PIF.

From resisting slave raids in the 18th century to defying colonial handovers in the 20th century, West Papua’s history shows this is not an “internal Indonesian matter” but an unfinished chapter in Pacific decolonisation.

Papuans were the first in Oceania to resist European slavery, the first to raise a national flag, the first to form a modern government — and the first to have recognised sovereignty revoked.

Any claim to a united Blue Pacific remains incomplete until this history is confronted and justice served.

Heart of Oceania’s future

Despite being treated as a side issue at the forum, West Papua lies at the very heart of Oceania — rescuing West Papua means rescuing the Pacific itself. The Papuan struggle for land, life and freedom mirrors the struggle of every island society to survive rising sea levels, external pressures and economic exploitation.

Restoring West Papua’s sovereignty would help Pacific leaders rediscover their strength, reaffirm their shared destiny and set a new course for a world in crisis.

In an era of global upheaval — marked by climate disruption, collapsing ecosystems and geopolitical rivalries — Oceania needs a new paradigm that places land, ocean and Indigenous sovereignty above the logic of extraction and the empty rituals of paper diplomacy.

The Honiara summit could have risen to this challenge. Instead, it repeated the familiar ritual of expressing concern without action.

Until Pacific leaders confront Indonesia’s colonial frontier war in West Papua, Iumi Tugeda’s vision of a united Blue Pacific will remain a fading star on the horizon.

It is time to move beyond ritual slogans and take real action — transforming annual declarations into concrete steps towards sovereignty, justice and enduring solidarity.

[Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea.]