SUVA, Nov 17 (AFP) - Spiralling social and political crises plaguing small Pacific nations threaten to "cast them adrift", the secretary general of the 16-nation Pacific Forum warned Monday, urging bold policy changes.
Noel Levi said the Forum, set up in 1971 to represent the island nations of the Pacific on the world stage, was also in crisis with the rest of the world viewing it as wasteful and its leadership packed with too many old people.
"We now find ourselves in a whirlpool of change in the Pacific and in the world, which threatens to cast adrift our nations and our peoples if we do not respond effectively," Levi told a panel reviewing the Forum's activities.
Levi said the list of problems facing the islands was long.
"Our region is struggling to deal with the fact that Pacific Island countries have some of the highest suicide rates in the world," Levi told a Forum review panel, "an extremely high rate of diabetes, obesity and other lifestyle diseases ..."
The islands, he continued, had a "spiralling incidence of alcohol and drug use, increasing unemployment and poverty accompanied by a rising number of sex workers, growing incidence of HIV/AIDS, political instability and transnational crime ... the list goes on.
"These indicators signal that we are still far from where we want to be despite our achievements."
Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, PNG, Samoa, Solomons, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, make up the Forum membership.
Chaired by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke, the review panel was set up to look into the Forum's effectiveness as a representative body.
Levi complained the two biggest members, Australia and New Zealand, had used the body to pursue their own foreign policy goals but attacked criticism that large amount of aid flowing into the region had produced few gains.
"This is not paradoxical at all if you consider that while much aid comes into the Pacific, much more goes out through trade to the aid donors, who are also our trade partners," Levi said.
"If you have more resources going out of the region than coming in through aid, is it any wonder that the Pacific remains underdeveloped?"
Calling for a more "robust mandate" for the secretary general, Levi said the Forum needed a "willingness and freedom to explore and recommend policy options even if they are not politically correct".
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