Pacific Security And Health Leaders Pledge Cooperation

Tuesday, 22 July 2025, 5:20 pm
Article: RNZ

Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific Journalist

A conference of Pacific security and health leaders concluded in Suva last week with the promise to "collaborate more" on a drug crisis spiralling out of control.

But public health experts say that law enforcement are undermining efforts to combat the drug-driven spread of HIV in Fiji, putting the wider region at risk.

This comes at a time when transmission of the disease has risen to levels only surpassed by the Philippines within the Asia-Pacific region, according to UNAIDS.

National HIV Response Taskforce chair Dr Jason Mitchell believes Fiji is still far behind where they need to be in terms of detection and prevention measures.

"I think a lot of times when we are trying to introduce strong public health interventions, there's opposition, oftentimes from our law enforcement agencies."

Dr Mitchell told RNZ Pacific that progressive prevention measures, such as needle and syringe programmes, are often opposed at all levels of Pacific governments.

"There may be legislation that they are often expected to uphold. They could also be responding to the public or political sentiments around drugs and drug users."

Speaking at the recent Pacific Regional and National Security Conference 2025, held in Suva, Dr Mitchell said that the growing drug trade in the Pacific is driving the spread of HIV.

"About 50 percent of people who were infected with HIV last year were as a result of intravenous drug use"

UN: 'Of course' police don't help

According to a new UNAIDS report, "Aids, Crisis and the Power to Transform" Fiji stands out in all the worst ways.

"Since 2014, number of new HIV infections in Fiji has risen by an alarming 10-fold. UNAIDS estimates that in 2014, there were fewer than 500 people living with HIV in Fiji. Just 10 years later, that number was 5900."

That rate, according to the report puts Fiji above Papua New Guinea, the previous regional leaders, to the second fastest transmission rate in the Asia-Pacific, behind only the Philippines.

The report further acknowledges that given people struggle to access support services where their case would be recorded, these estimates could fall short.

"In 2024, only 36 percent of people living with HIV in Fiji were aware of their HIV status, and only 24 percent were receiving treatment."

When asked whether law enforcement in Fiji hinders public health efforts, UNAIDS head Renata Ram said yes.

"In the Pacific, law enforcement policies can sometimes create significant barriers to effective HIV prevention, particularly for key populations such as sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who use drugs."

"The criminalisation of these populations in many Pacific Island countries contributes to increased stigma and discrimination, driving them further away from essential health and HIV services."

Ram said that colonial-era laws that continue to criminalise same-sex relations, sex work and drug possession are causing HIV-infected persons to avoid seeking help.

"Punitive drug laws and the lack of protective legal environments for vulnerable populations hinder the implementation and scale-up of high-impact interventions, such as needle-syringe programmes and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)."

Collaboration needed on all fronts

Fiji Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu said at the conference that he and Dr Mitchell are finding time to sit down and have a chat.

"It's more befitting for us to have more conference in regards to this, so that we can know what's happening in other countries, share information, look into the success stories of other countries, and how can we ourselves learn from what other countries are doing well."

Tudravu said they have to fight a war on two fronts: trying to hold back the spread of drugs internally, while stopping the flow of drugs into the country from the wider Pacific.

"We share information, we share resources, and we help each other... but having said that Pacific islands are limited to the resources that we have, so we need the partners that are out there, our bigger brothers, to come on board, because what we are doing in the Pacific also affects them."

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime's head of the Pacific programme Virginia Comolli told RNZ Pacific that a transnational operation, with shared resources and the help of Australia and New Zealand, would give police the space to make changes internally.

"This is certainly a law enforcement issue that requires involvement of the police and customs, etc, but it also requires these security actors to cooperate closely with doctors, with public health practitioners, with mental health specialists."

Comolli said she was impressed with how open and frank the police leaders were.

"They are the first ones to say they cannot fight this challenge alone... who would admit that capabilities within law enforcement aren't always up to scratch."

"They also highlighted how legislation needs to be to be updated in order to be on par with these emerging challenges in the introduction of new illicit substances. So I think there was lots of honesty there."

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