A sum of all fears

Some of the main points from the US State Department’s individual country reports on human rights: • Ethnicity remains a dominant part of Fiji life; • Police brutality is a problem in Fiji; • 10 per cent of Fiji’s women are abused in some way; • Kiribati limits the freedom of the press; • Violence against women and abuse of children are problems in the Marshall Islands; • Cultural resistance to the justice system is allowing some to act with impunity in Micronesia; • Discrimination against foreign workers in Palau is a serious problem; • PNG’s police force has committed serious human rights abuses; • Violence by women against other women is a problem in PNG; • Some Samoan families spend up to 30 percent of their income on churches; • Tonga’s major human rights abuse was the inability of its citizens to change the government; • Tuvalu is ‘ ’egalitarian, democratic, and respectful of human rights”. ■

Children are vulnerable