(I made big mistake on the first draft. Free Association will be continued, but its aid scheme will be changed. However all arrangements are still on the process of negotiation. Dr Patrick and Ben - Thank you for your corrections. )
米国が近い将来、その経済援助の形を変えようとしているミクロネシア３国の自由連合協定。 今、私が進めているミクロネシアの海洋安全保障事業と、また日米同盟と密接な関係があるのでこの数年勉強する努力をしてきた。 一番下に自由連合協定について触れたブログの一覧を作成した。 ここで一回まとめておきたい。 英文で書いたのは、日本には自由連合協定について知っている人がいないため、間違いがあっても指摘してもらえない。それと、やっぱりこの件を一番知りたがっているのは当事者のミクロネシアの人たちだ。早速反応があったので嬉しい。
Free Association – Another Kiwi legacy for Pacific Islands
Rieko Hayakawa PhD Scholar, Otago University
Although a small country in contrast with Australia, Japan and the US, New Zealand has been playing a unique and outstanding role for the political development of the Pacific Islands. She took an important leadership role for the establishment of the Pacific Islands Forum (previous South Pacific Forum).
She kept open a dialogue with the Fiji Military government while Australia sent their military. Another masterpiece from NZ is “Free Association”. Today three Micronesian countries are struggling with future of their Free Association with United States.
I have found, however, that many people from both Micronesia and the US such as government officers were not aware that the idea of Free Association developed in NZ. Many New Zealand academics are also unaware of this as well. I do not have the capacity to write very much on this very important issue, however.
I will just try to make a memorandum which may help my friends, especially in Micronesia, to understand what is the “Free Association”.
Kiwi – vanguard as a Decolonizer
So far I have found only one source for the Kiwi’s role in developing the ‘Free Association’.
This is the “Pacific People’s Constitution Report” published in September 2000 by the Ministry of Justice of NZ. “2.5 Decolonisation after World War II” of this report describes the details of Kiwi’s role for decolonization through quoting Lindsay Watt, a senior New Zealand diplomat.
According to him: ‘New Zealand - both aided and abetted by the United Nations - found itself in the vanguard as a decoloniser in the South Pacific through the 1960’s and into the next decade’.
How Kiwi vanguard?
UN Resolution 1514 (XV) known as the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, was adopted by 89 votes in favour (NZ), with none against, but nine abstentions.
The next day, the General Assembly adopted a further declaration which included the following Principle.
Principle VI A Non-Self-Governing Territory can be said to have reached a full measure of self-government by:
(a) Emergence as a sovereign independent State;
(b) Free association with an independent State; or
(c) Integration with an independent State.
Principle VII
(a) Free association should be the result of a free and voluntary choice by the peoples of the territory concerned expressed through informed and democratic processes. It should be one which respects the individuality and the cultural characteristics of the territory and its peoples, and retains for the peoples of the territory which is associated with an independent State the freedom to modify the status of that territory through the expression of their will by democratic means and through constitutional processes.
(b) The associated territory should have the right to determine its internal constitution without outside interference, in accordance with due constitutional processes and the freely expressed wishes of the people. This does not preclude consultations as appropriate or necessary under the terms of the free association agreed upon.
The report did not mention clearly the exact role NZ played in this result, however, after this resolution NZ make arrangements for Free Association with both Cook and Niue. This it is obvious that Kiwi was the “vanguard as a decoloniser”
“free ASSOCIATION” – legacy of Best and Brightest
How was this new political status - “Free Association” - introduced to Micronesia?
According to the “National Security and Self-Determination United States Policy in Micronesia 1961-1972”(2000), again there is a Kiwi influence seen in an individual – Prof James W. Davidson. Prof Davidson has a quite unique and interesting past not only as an academic but also as an activist. However, I would like to skip this and go forward.
Amamta Kbua and other Micronesian legislators met Prof Davidson when they attended the Nauruan independence celebration in January 1968. Subsequently, in the following year Prof Davidson was hired for Micronesia’s Future Political Status Commission in 1969. He thus led the commission which recommended a relationship of ‘Free Association’ with the United States. I will skip all the complex negotiations and discussions, by saying that the Marshalls gained their independence with a “Compact of Free Association” in 1979, and subsequently the FSM in 1986, and Palau in 1994.
The “Compact of Free Association” is known as a huge document which not many people have read nor understood all the individual articles, including me. This is a masterpiece from the “Best and Brightest” of the US administration under the cold war. Recently the Palau government had to hire the most expensive US lawyer to solve the current Free Association negotiations. Maybe this is another clever trick of the “Best and Brightest”?
Note that the Kiwi’s ‘Free Association’ is more straight forward and direct - just a few pages of notes between two governments;
Future - Make another Kiwi legacy
My simple question at this moment is – Has the US violated UN resolution of decolonization by distorting the spirit of “Free Association”? Of course we understand that this arrangement was made during the middle of the Cold War. Also the US and Micronesian political and geopolitical situations were far different from those from both New Zealand and the South Pacific.
This is time for Kiwi’s to observe, evaluate and provide advice to the North Pacific Islands on original “Free Association”?
