East Timor joins Pacific Community

Transcript

The addition of East Timor or Timor-Leste to the Secretariat of the Pacific Community is seen as part of a natural progression towards a stronger region by the organisation.

The East Timor will be the SPC's first new member since 1983.

SPC Deputy Director-General Cameron Diver says the move has been a long time coming.

CAMERON DRIVER: The SPC has provided assistance to Timor-Leste under the Tenth European Development Fund.  We've been having discussions with them on closer relations since 2012 when Timor authorities were invited to attended SPC's annual conference in an observer capacity. Timor-Leste and SPC are seeing the mutual benefits of working more closely together. In 2013 the governing body of the organisation, the Conference of the Pacific Community, authorised an extension of the territorial scope of the organisation to include Timor-Leste and that (opened) the door, for formal invitation to be issued which was done. All in all, discussions which are still ongoing because there are some internal processes to be completed, taken between two and three years.

KORO VAKA'UTA: Why the need to expand past the 26 countries and territories?

CD: This is something that obviously was a decision made by the members of the organisation,  Timor-Leste has had relations with a number of SPC countries and particularly those that are in the Melanesian arc. There are historical and cultural ties to the Pacific and Timor-Leste is also a member of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of countries that works with the EU
and is the last of those ACP countries not to be a member of SPC in the Pacific region. The members saw both historical and cultural reasons but also for even the links to having a broader more holistic approach to development challenges in the region that there were a lot of advantages in inviting Timor-Leste in, so that our organisation can address the challenges of all of the members rather than just some of them and then having to try bring Timor-Leste in, on an ad hoc basis.

KV: Some may wonder how Timor-Leste fits into the Pacific community but it sounds like they   already have been anyway.

CD: They've been working with us and with the member countries for a number of years and once again the decision to extend the invitation to join was a decision which wasn't made by the secretariat. It was made by the 26 member countries by consensus.

KV: Earlier Timor-Leste had looked to one of the advantages of membership being able to draw on SPC's fisheries expertise. What are the benefits of bringing in Timor-Leste to the SPC?

CD: Timor-Leste obviously has its own history, its own partners, its own way of looking at particular development challenges. You bring in a new member, and this would be the first new member that SPC has had in 30 years, obviously it has the advantage of bringing in those new perspectives. I think that there's a lot of cross fertilisation that can take place.

KV: It seems that the Pacific is starting to branch out in terms of networks, is that accurate?

It's always an advantage when you can increase your outreach, create new partnerships and draw on experience, expertise and share your own experience and expertise with others. It's one of the things that I think is a fundamental duty of an international organisation like ours, which is in the Pacific and for the Pacific because what we're trying to do is to federate expertise, goodwill and partnership for the benefit of the region, its countries and its people.

Mr Diver says the SPC is not ruling out further expasion and is working on modifying membership and observer status regulations.