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Conflict in New Caledonia

Protests against a French government plan to impose new voting rules on New Caledonia spiralled into the deadliest violence on the French Pacific territory since the 1980s. The unrest has exposed divisions between indigenous inhabitants, descendants of colonisers and newcomers to the overseas archipelago. New Caledonia, a French colonial holding in the south Pacific, has a long history of tension between its European (largely French) colonists and the indigenous Melanesians, also knows as Kanaks. A notable Kanak revolt that occurred in 1878 claimed over a thousand lives and resulted in increased repression on the part of the French colonizers.

By the late Twentieth Century, Kanaks made up about 45% of New Caledonia's population, while Europeans (most born in the territory), made up about a third of the colony's population. Around this time there were growing pro-independence sentiments among the Konaks, while at the same time the European population strongly opposed the idea. In the 1980s the Front de Liberation Nationale Kanake et Socialists(FLNKS) was founded under the leadership of Jean-Marie Tjibaou. In November of 1984 violent clashes broke out between the pro-independence Kanaks and the Europeans who opposed independence. Tjibaou, leader of the Kanaka Socialist National Liberation Front, the Melanesian independence movement, reacted to the deaths of the two front leaders by rejecting the referendum and calling for immediate and complete independence.

These were followed by violent riots in the capital, Noumea, causing France to declare a state of emergency lasting six months. On 12 January 1985 France announced that it was sending 1,000 more troops to this South Pacific territory. There are already 2,280 French military police and 3,000 regular army troops in New Caledonia. A transitional regime was instituted during this period that allowed different groups to voice their concerns and issues about New Caledonia's progress toward independence.

The independence movement got a boost when the United Nations put New Caledonia on its decolonization list in 1986. France viewed the move as an attempt by the UN to interfere in its internal affairs and consequently expelled the Australian consul general from Noumea (Australia had been highly critical of France). In 1988 the peace process was marred when Kanak separatists attacked a police station and took 27 hostages. The French government retaliated, resulting in the death of 19 Kanaks. Soon after, pro- and anti- independence groups agreed to the Matignon Accord designed to reconcile the two camps by proposing an end to direct French rule and proposed a vote on independence to be held in 1998.

Tjibaou was assassinated in 1989 by radical members of FLNKS who believed that he had sold out the Kanaks by his participation in the peace process. The violence began to settle down in the early 1990s, but the proposed vote was later postponed by the 1998 Noumea Accord that gave New Caledonia greater autonomy from France and further postponed the vote on independence until 2014-2019. New Caledonian citizenship was also established. France claimed that the delay in the vote was due to fears of renewed violence, while some suspect that the actual reason was because France did not want to chance loosing New Caledonia's economic assets.

Deadly riots erupted in Nouméa, capital of New Caledonia, a French Pacific island territory, on 20 May 2024 before a vote in the National Assembly, the French lower house of parliament, on a proposed electoral reform. Under the terms of the 1998 Nouméa Accord, only New Caledonia natives and long-term residents have been eligible to vote in provincial elections and local referendums, to preserve the balance between the indigenous Kanak population and new arrivals from mainland France. Tensions have simmered for decades between the Kanaks seeking independence and descendants of colonisers who want it to remain part of France. The reforms are aimed at enlarging the electorate for New Caledonia’s provincial elections, a move decried by the pro-independence movement.

The proportion of voters disenfranchised from provincial elections has steadily increased over the past few years. If the reform becomes law, more than 25,000 people could join the electoral roll: 12,441 natives and almost 13,400 people who have resided in the territory for at least 10 years, according to the New Caledonian Institute of Statistics.

Provincial elections are due before December 2024 to choose the elected representatives of the three provincial assemblies. The stakes in these elections are high. The distribution of seats in the provincial assemblies directly influences the distribution of seats in the territory’s Congress, or parliament, which in turn appoints the president of the New Caledonian government. Anti-independence candidates won 28 of the 54 parliamentary seats in 2019.

While “loyalists” – residents who want New Caledonia to remain part of France – are calling for equal voting rights, pro-independence residents believe that expanding the electoral body could lead to further losses of seats in Congress and less power for the Kanak people.

Indigenous Kanak people accounted for 41.2% of the archipelago's population in the 2019 census, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). “The Caledonian population is questioning the legitimacy of allowing a part of the population, which may not stay very long in New Caledonia, or that lives in very closed circles in the south of the territory, to have access to the vote,” said Évelyne Barthou, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Pau. “There is a general feeling of anger and injustice but also a fear that the Kanak population will disappear or be drowned out by the rest. These tensions would be less pronounced if the inequalities between Europeans and Kanaks weren't so marked today.”

Nouméa, which has a large European population and a dominant role in the archipelago’s economy, is the centre of the current unrest. Social and economic inequalities persist there, with “very marked ethnic cleavages, with economically privileged neighbourhoods on one side and largely disadvantaged neighbourhoods on the other, inhabited mainly by Kanaks or Melanesians”, said Barthou.

The proposed constitutional reform followed three referenda on independence won by the “no” camp between 2018 and 2021. The last referendum, marked by a record abstention rate, was boycotted by pro-independence campaigners who criticised the decision to hold the vote during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The archipelago’s main pro-independence party, the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), denounced the reform's approval in the National Assembly, which took place shortly after midnight 22 May 2024. “There is no dialogue between those who initiated this reform and the Caledonians, even though agreement cannot be reached without them,” said Isabelle Merle, a historian of colonialism specialising in New Caledonia at the National Centre of Science and Research (CNRS). “We can't neglect the emancipation process by imposing rules without taking divergent opinions into account.”

Discussions on the archipelago's future began in 1988 after a decade of separatist conflict and violence. The Matignon-Oudinot Accords of that summer created three provinces and officially recognised the Kanak people. The Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998 under the leadership of France’s then prime minister Lionel Jospin, launched the process of decolonising the territory.

“While the Nouméa Accord enabled the transfer of powers, New Caledonia's colonial history seems to have been forgotten in the (recent) parliamentary debate, with some representatives ignoring it,” said Merle. “The idea of this reform is to return to an initial situation where any French person arriving in the territory had the right to vote, while the Kanaks did not. This reopening of the floodgates is causing tensions, as expected and announced.”

Anger provoked by the reform is compounded by frustration in an archipelago where over 26% of young people are unemployed and a crisis involving nickel, New Caledonia's main economic resource, is causing concern. Daniel Wéa, president of the Movement of Young Kanaks in France, told Reuters at a Paris rally that “if there is violence today in the country, it is a response to the violence suffered since colonisation until today”. Daniel Goa, president of the pro-independence Caledonian Union party, called on young people to “go home” while strongly condemning acts of looting and violence. He nonetheless stressed that “the unrest of the last 24 hours reveals the determination of our young people to no longer let France do this to them”.

The National Assembly passed the voting rights bill by 351 votes to 153, with left-wing MPs in opposition. The far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally) and rightwing Les Républicains voted largely in favour, as did the overwhelming majority of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance coalition, with the exception of a handful of deputies from the centrist MoDem party. In the Assembly, there are marked differences between deputies who consider decolonisation a thing of the past – such as New Caledonian MP Nicolas Metzdorf, a member of Macron’s coalition who is known for his anti-independence stance – and those who point out that the UN still lists New Caledonia as a non-self-governing territory awaiting decolonisation, as reported in French news site Mediapart.

For young people in the archipelago, colonialism is not a thing of the past. “Despite a preference for local employment, many young people see opportunities slipping away from them to people in mainland France,” said Barthou, who conducted a field survey among New Caledonian youth last year. “This is just one example of the neocolonial logic to which New Caledonia remains prone today.”

New Caledonia's largest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), on 28 November 2024 unveiled the main outcome of its Congress last weekend, including its plans for the French Pacific territory's political future. Speaking at a news conference in Nouméa, the party's newly-elected executive bureau, now headed by Emmanuel Tjibaou, debriefed the media about the main resolutions made during its Congress. One of the motions was specifically concerning a timeframe for New Caledonia's road to independence. Tjibaou said UC now envisaged that one of the milestones on this road to sovereignty would be the signing of a "Kanaky Agreement", at the latest on 24 September 2025 (which itself is a highly symbolic date, the day of France's annexation ["taking of possession"] of New Caledonia in 1853). This, he said, would mark the beginning of a five-year "transition period" from "2025 to 2030" that would be concluded by New Caledonia's accession to full sovereignty, under a status yet to be defined. Several wordings have recently been advanced by stakeholders from around the political spectrum. Depending on the pro-independence and pro-France sympathies, these have varied from "shared sovereignty", "independence in partnership", "independence-association" and, more recently, from the also divided pro-France loyalists camp, an "internal federalism" (Le Rassemblement-LR party) or a "territorial federation" (Les Loyalistes). Charismatic pro-independence leader, the late Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Emmanuel's father, was known for being an advocate of a relativist approach to the term "independence", to which he usually preferred to adjunct the pragmatic term "inter-dependence". Negotiations between all political parties and the French State are expected to begin. The talks between pro-independence, anti-independence parties and the French State are scheduled in such a way that all parties manage to reach a comprehensive and inclusive political agreement no later than March 2025. The talks had completely stalled after insurrectional riots broke out on 13 May 2024. Over three years, following three referendums (2018, 2020, 2021, the latter being strongly contested by the pro-independence side) on the question of independence (all yielding a majority in favour of New Caledonia remaining part of France), there had been several attempts to hold inclusive talks in order to discuss New Caledonia's political future. But UC and other parties (including pro-France and pro-independence) did not manage to sit at the same table. Speaking to journalists, Tjibaou confirmed that under its new leadership, UC was now willing to come back to the negotiating table. He said "May 13 has stopped our advances in those exchanges" but "now is the time to build the road to full sovereignty". In the footsteps of those expected negotiations, heavy campaigning will follow to prepare for crucial provincial elections to be held no later than November 2025. The five years of "transition" (2025-2030), would be used to transfer the remaining "regal" powers from France as well as putting in place "a political, financial and international" framework, accompanied by the French State, Tjibaou elaborated. And after the transitional period, UC's President said a new phase of talks could start to put in place what he terms "interdependence conventions on some of the "regal" - main - powers" (defence, law and order, foreign affairs, currency). This project, Tjibaou said, could resemble a sort of independence in partnership, a "shared sovereignty", a concept that was strongly suggested early November 2024 by visiting French Senate President Gérard Larcher. But Tjibaou said there was a difference in the sense that those discussions on sharing would only take place once all the powers have been transferred from France. "You can only share sovereignty if you have obtained it first", he told local media. One of the other resolutions from its Congress held last weekend in the small village of Mia (Canala) was to reiterate its call to liberate Christian Téin, appointed President of the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front) in absentia late August, even though he is currently imprisoned in Mulhouse (North-east of France) pending his trial for his alleged involvement in the organisation of the demonstrations that degenerated into the May 13 riots, arson, looting and a deadly toll of 13 people, several hundred injured and material damage estimated at some 2.2 billion Euros. Tjibaou also said, within a currently divided pro-independence movement, he hoped that a reunification process and "clarification" would be possible with other components of FLNKS, namely the Progressist Union in Melanesia (UPM) and the Kanak Liberation Party (PALIKA). Since August 2024, both UPM and PALIKA have de facto withdrawn with FLNKS's political bureau, saying they no longer recognised themselves in the way the movement had radicalised. In 1988, after half a decade of a quasi civil war, Jean-Marie Tjibaou signed the Matignon-Oudinot agreements with New Caledonia's pro-France and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur. The third signatory was the French State. One year later, in 1989, Tjibaou was shot dead by a hard-line pro-independence militant. His son Emmanuel was 13 years old at the time. In 1998, a new agreement, the Nouméa Accord, was signed, with a focus on increased autonomy, the notions of "common destiny" and a local "citizenship" and a gradual transfer of powers from France. After the three referendums held between 2018 and 2021, the Nouméa Accord prescribed that if there had been three referendums rejecting independence, then political stakeholders should "meet to examine the situation thus generated". Union Calédonienne also stressed that the Nouméa Accord remained the founding document of all future political discussions. "We are sticking to the Nouméa Accord because it is this document that brings us to the elements of accession to sovereignty".