How France manages the first outbreak of serious violence in New Caledonia in 40 years will affect not only its future role there but its acceptance as a resident Pacific, and Indo-Pacific, power.

The violence of indigenous independence supporters, many of them very young, signals that the inconclusiveness of earlier peace agreements risks taking New Caledonia back to the bloodshed of the 1980s. The unrest is targeting the capital, Noumea, and its population of Europeans, who mostly support staying French.

The wounds are deep. The peace agreements that ended violence in the 1980s largely succeeded because of difficult and constant compromises by the French state, loyalist parties and independence parties. Mutual trust in the promises of those agreements to work towards self-determination underpinned the French state conducting three referendums in New Caledonia from 2018 to 2021. The first two were impeccably organised and showed, respectively, that 56.7 percent and 53.3 percent opposed independence.

But the state dropped the ball in a third referendum in 2021, sticking with an intended voting date despite indigenous requests for postponement. At the time, hundreds of Kanaks had died from Covid-19. Their leaders said they could not ask their people to campaign or vote when their traditions required lengthy mourning rituals. The resulting indigenous boycott saw the count of opposition to independence soar to 96.5 percent.

Since then, divisions have deepened. Loyalists, backed by the government in Paris, say all three votes were valid and want to cement the territory as part of France. Independence groups reject the third vote and seek another; some refuse to participate in discussion about the future. They rejected Macron’s offer of a chemin de pardon (path of forgiveness) when he visited in July 2023. They did not attend a meeting he convened, and their supporters did not turn out for his major speech there, sending a strong message of discontent.

Macron then threatened unilateral action unless local parties came to an agreement. Informal discussions between some parties from each side in December ended with wide divergences, including over a further independence vote and voter eligibility.

To set a deadline, Macron introduced legislation postponing local elections from April 2024 to December 2025, and he put forward another bill that would amend the French constitution, imposing broader voter eligibility and thereby diluting the Kanak voting share, unless locals reached agreement before the end of June.

Demonstrations erupted into violence on 13 May, the day France’s National Assembly debated imposing from Paris the enlargement of voter eligibility. The destruction perpetrated by young Kanaks signalled not only to France and loyalist parties who were their targets but also to Kanak leaders and neighbouring countries the depth of distress of a new generation who felt disrespected and excluded from determining the future of their homeland.

How France responds will be decisive for its sustainable future in New Caledonia.

New Caledonia’s population is about 270,000. In the census of 2019, indigenous Kanaks were 41 percent, Europeans 29 percent and other Pacific islanders and ‘others’ composed the remaining 30 percent. Another census is due this year.

Kanaks may now exceed 45 percent, since there have been net departures of about 2000 people a year since 2015, almost all presumably non-indigenous. Moreover, some people in the ‘others’ category, which includes the sub-categories of ‘mixed’ and ‘Caldeonian’, would also be Kanaks.  And the Kanak share of the population will rise, especially since recent developments may contribute to an increase in non-Kanak departures.

While New Caledonia’s neighbours have quietly supported the peace agreements, they remain concerned about the interests of the islanders in the non-self-governing French territory. Some of them took New Caledonia to the United Nations Decolonisation Committee in 1986, ensuring annual UN scrutiny of the territory and France’s dealings with it since then. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) has regularly sent missions monitoring implementation of the Noumea Accord and observed each referendum, expressing serious reservations on the third.  The Melanesian Spearhead Group (Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s FLNKS independence coalition) was formed in the mid-1980s specifically to support Kanak independence claims.

With the eruption of violence, their silence has broken. Making Australia’s highest-level statement in decades, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia was closely monitoring the situation and encouraged all parties to work together constructively to shape the institutional future of New Caledonia. PIF Secretary-General Henry Puna said he was not surprised by the riots, noting it was unfortunate that the third referendum had been allowed to go ahead amid the pandemic. PIF chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said New Caledonia and French Polynesia had been included in the forum ‘in recognition of their calls for greater autonomy coming from their people’, and supported providing help to prevent conflict. Vanuatu Prime Minister and Melanesian Spearhead Group  Chair Charlot Salwai publicly opposed France’s constitutional change and urged a return to the spirit of the peace agreements and the sending of a dialogue mission led by a mutually respected person.

France has done much to regain the acceptance and trust of the region in recent decades. Responding to island governments’ visceral opposition to its policies in the 1980s, France abandoned nuclear testing in the region and gave greater autonomy to its Pacific territories. It did so by respecting local governments and people.

Macron has articulated an Indo-Pacific vision for France that’s firmly based on its sovereignty in the Pacific. But, to maintain France’s claims as an Indo-Pacific power, he must listen to the large and growing indigenous minority in its pre-eminent Pacific territory, New Caledonia. And he must listen to the appeals of Pacific island governments, so they and France can move forward together with humility and respect.

New Caledonia’s third independence referendum under the 1998 Noumea Accord was held on 12 December as planned by France, over the opposition of the indigenous-based independence parties. Those parties had called for non-participation if the vote proceeded on that date, given the impact of Covid-19 deaths on Kanak communities and their requirement for extended mourning rites.

The results show that their call was heeded by more than half of eligible voters. With a turnout of 43.9%, a mere 3.5% favoured independence and 96.5% supported staying with France. This compared with a turnout of 85.7% for the second referendum in 2020, when the pro-France vote was 53.3% and support for independence just under 47%. In the first referendum in 2018, with 81% turnout, 56.7% voted to stay with France and 43.3% voted for independence.

French President Emmanuel Macron declared that New Caledonians had ‘massively pronounced against acceding to full sovereignty and independence in a context of strong abstention’. He said ‘the majority of Caledonians’ had ‘freely decided’ to stay within the Republic, making France the more ‘beautiful’. He said that the Noumea Accord had legally expired, and foreshadowed discussions to build a common destiny ‘in this Indo-Pacific region in full reconstruction and subject to major tensions’ and to face the challenges ‘in this Pacific Ocean which is an integral part of our national space’.

France’s overseas territories minister arrived in New Caledonia two days before the vote, and has made numerous public statements urging discussion, if only on pressing health and financial matters.

Local loyalists have claimed their third victory and indicated that they would participate in discussions about the future, as the Noumea Accord specifies should occur after three ‘no’ votes on independence.

Independence parties, united as never before in a strategy committee including trade unions and customary elders, reacted strongly. The committee denied the validity of the vote, which it said was against the spirit and letter of the Noumea Accord, the decolonisation process and UN resolutions. It said independence parties wouldn’t participate in discussions until after next year’s French national elections. Party leader Rock Wamytan had presented their case for postponement to the UN just days before the vote and has since described the outcome as null and void. Another party leader, Charles Washetine, said parties would contest the result in the region and internationally, would never discuss ‘yet another agreement on a statute within the French Republic’ and would proceed with their independence plan ‘whatever it costs’.

Regional leaders have also reacted. The Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat in a communiqué described the vote as against Article 1 of the UN charter and UN resolution 1514 on self-determination, warned against imposing the result on the Kanak people, and called on the UN to engage with France and New Caledonia.

The Pacific Islands Forum sent a ministerial committee to observe the vote but it didn’t wait for its final report to comment. On 14 December, the committee issued a statement noting the significant non-participation and the importance of civic participation as an integral component of any democracy. It also said that the spirit in which the referendum was conducted ‘weighs heavily’ on the Noumea Accord and the self-determination process.

The Australian government has remained markedly silent after this vote.* Immediately after each of the first two referendums, it issued a statement noting the vote and supporting the process.

In New Caledonia, this referendum shows that divisions run more deeply than ever over independence and the territory’s future. Things are at an impasse at least until after the French national elections next spring. As Macron indicated, the Noumea Accord has legally expired. France notionally set a deadline of June 2023 for a transition to whatever comes next, and wants discussions.

Independence parties aren’t in a hurry. Even though they lose the benefits inherent in vote-weighting provisions (restricting voter eligibility only to longstanding residents) that expire with the accord, indigenous Kanaks aren’t going anywhere. While official population figures are fraught with issues relating to definitions of identity, the Kanak population has increased from 40% to at least 41% in the 10 years to 2019, while the European population has declined from 29% to 24%, and the territory has recorded high rates of emigration since 2014.

Violence can’t be ruled out. It is less than 12 months since indigenous independence supporters invaded the billion-dollar nickel plant in South Province, burning buildings and vehicles and throwing Molotov cocktails.

More broadly, Pacific leaders will at the least be asking themselves whether France is serious in its efforts to be a responsible Indo-Pacific partner when it seems to be treating the critical final vote ending a 30-year process, so extensively boycotted by indigenous independence supporters, as showing massive support for France.

* After the publication of this article, the Australian foreign minister issued a statement.

Stability in Australia’s near neighbour across the Coral Sea, and the influence of France in the region, are at risk with a call by pro-independence parties not to participate in New Caledonia’s final independence referendum if France insists on holding it on 12 December. The Melanesian Spearhead Group has called on the United Nations to support postponing the vote.

France’s decision to hold the third, decisive, referendum on 12 December, over the opposition of independence parties, has led to arguably the worst outcome: a call by the independence coalition, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), for its supporters not to participate. Under the 1998 Noumea Accord, the vote could have been held any time up to October 2022.

The suggestion of a Kanak boycott is dynamite in New Caledonia. Paris’s careful efforts organising the first two referendums under the current process, in 2018 and 2020, were designed to deliver an incontestable vote and demonstrate France’s neutrality to the territory and the region alike.

This was to avoid a repetition of the disastrous 1987 independence vote. Kanaks, who form the bulk of the independence movement, boycotted that process because France allowed people to vote who had been in the territory only three years. That followed a decade of French policy encouraging migration from other parts of France specifically to outnumber the indigenous people and defeat independence demands. With that boycott, the vote unsurprisingly returned 98% support for staying with France. Tensions escalated, culminating in a bloody hostage situation in April 1988, between two rounds of French presidential elections. Twenty-one people died.

No one wants a repetition of the 1987 experience.

Along with the diminished credibility of the 1987 vote, and the suffering of the New Caledonian people, France’s image itself was tarnished. Regional and international pressure mounted. France negotiated agreements ending the violence and promised the unique three-vote referendum process currently underway.

With a deadline of October next year, the FLNKS preferred a later vote so that it could build on the growing support for independence over the previous two referendums, from 43.3% in 2018 to 46.7% in 2020, and exceed the required 50%. Loyalist parties favoured an early vote, to maintain their majority and move the stagnating economy forward. When France’s minister for overseas territories, Sébastien Lecornu, announced the early December date, he acknowledged that it was a unilateral decision but referred to France’s statutory right to set that date. The last meeting of Noumea Accord signatories (in 2019) had agreed that the vote should not coincide with French presidential and parliamentary elections in April and June 2022.

When Lecornu visited New Caledonia in early October, independence leaders raised their concerns again, highlighting the serious impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on their communities and the effect on campaigning of health measures and cultural grieving customs. New Caledonia suffered no deaths up to 9 September 2021, but by 21 October, 245 people had died of Covid out of a population of 280,000. Most were Kanaks.

After Lecornu indicated that the date would only be changed if the pandemic ‘got out of control’, the FLNKS renewed its call for postponement and, on 20 October, called formally for the ‘non-participation’ of its supporters if the referendum were to be held on 12 December. While they avoided the word ‘boycott’ given its local associations, the impact is the same. The same day, the Papua New Guinea representative in New York presented a Melanesian Spearhead Group declaration to the UN Decolonisation Committee noting the effect of the pandemic and supporting the referendum’s deferral.

France’s preparations for this last vote have not been as carefully balanced as for the first two. Apart from unilaterally setting the date, Paris has sought to shape the process to make it more favourable to France, overlooking Kanak sensitivities. France called a May meeting that was not attended by all participants, commissioned and published selective opinion polls, and prepared a paper on the consequences of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote that focused mostly on the risks of independence. With the resurgence of Covid, France banned non-essential travel to and from the territory until 31 December—after the planned vote. It is bringing in 2,000 security personnel, many more than for the last two votes. While France claims that special measures are necessary for this inevitably more tense final vote and its uncertain aftermath, the overall effect is one of appearing to favour the loyalists.

The ball is now in France’s court. Melanesian countries have expressed their view. Pacific Islands Forum countries and the UN continue to monitor the referendum, having observed the 2018 and 2020 votes. While Australia rightly takes no position on the outcome, it supports the full implementation of the Noumea Accord. Australia along with its Pacific neighbours would expect France to continue the neutrality it displayed in the first two referendums by delivering an incontestable, fair vote in this, the final and decisive independence referendum for New Caledonia.

Violent disturbances over nickel production, with implications for Australian security, in our close French neighbour, New Caledonia, have attracted attention in Paris, but not here. Only Nic Maclellan, true to excellent form, has written about these significant recent developments.

New Caledonia is in the middle of a long-promised self-determination process. It has held two of a possible three independence referendums. The first, in November 2018, delivered a 57% to 43% vote to remain with France; the second, held just weeks ago, in October, reduced that support to just over 53%, with just under 47% voting for independence. In both polls, independence support came primarily from indigenous Kanaks. A final vote may be held at end of 2022.

Recent violent protests centred on New Caledonia’s rich nickel deposits—it holds around of 25% of global nickel reserves—should be of serious concern to France and neighbours including Australia. Nickel has been at the heart of independence demands ever since France began to roll back autonomies it extended after World War II, because the local people wanted to invite foreign investment in competition with the colonial French mining company SLN (Société Le Nickel). France’s tighter control and related migration into the territory led to an independence movement in the 1960s and 1970s, with serious violence against French security forces occurring by 1988.

A succession of agreements followed, promising increasing autonomy and culminating in the referendum process currently underway. Underpinning those agreements were understandings, known as the ‘mining prerequisite’, about redistributing the benefits of the archipelago’s main resource. Before then, the rich returns of SLN’s one colonial nickel plant went primarily to France.

Rebalancing provisions included building two multibillion-dollar nickel plants, one in the mainly Kanak north, and the other, Goro, in the mainly European south. The northern plant is 51% owned by Northern Province–controlled SMSP. The southern plant has been run by Vale Brazil. Both have been plagued by technical and financial problems, aggravated by the notorious volatility of global nickel markets.

In December 2019, Vale said it would sell Goro. Australia’s Century Resources indicated an interest, but pulled out in September, a month before the second independence referendum, after Kanak leaders expressed dissatisfaction with foreign ownership, advocating instead a ‘Southern plant = country plant’ solution, under which New Caledonia would hold the largest share. Kanak independence leaders opposed Vale’s negotiations with a Swiss investor, Trafigura, proposing instead that a Northern Province statutory body, Sofinor, share majority ownership with Korea Zinc.

Loyalist parties based in the south vehemently opposed the Sofinor proposal. By early December, regular protests and demonstrations led by independence parties had turned into road blockages, and stoning of police. Police officers were hurt in confrontations on 7 December, and on 11 December protestors tried to ram through the police protection at Goro. Police fired shots in response.

Unsurprisingly, Korea Zinc withdrew its interest on 7 December, with Sofinor announcing another potential partner. Protest leaders accuse France and loyalists of manoeuvring to prevent a majority local interest in the project.

Minister for Overseas France Sébastien Lecornu has denied manipulation of the issue and invited all parties to Paris for discussions about local participation, not simply in Goro, but in SLN and the northern plant. He has linked a round-table on nickel with a third referendum and broader issues. So far, his efforts to initiate sorely needed discussions about the future of New Caledonia have not been productive.

These latest developments are disturbing because they hark back to the disturbances of the mid-1980s, and they are occurring at a critical turning point for New Caledonia. No doubt independence leaders are asserting their new-found and growing electoral support shown in the independence referendums so far.

Any talks about the future of New Caledonia must address the production and distribution of nickel revenues. Independence leaders point to years of broken promises for a strategic review of nickel under three decades of peace agreements. They have chosen a fundamental centre of gravity in the history of their independence movement with which to up the ante as the agreements come to an end.

The best that can be hoped is that the escalating protests will cease and talks will take place between all parties to resolve the immediate problems surrounding nickel development, which will hopefully lead to more productive negotiation between loyalists and independence leaders about a shared longer-term future.

Australians should be closely watching these developments. New Caledonia forms part of the strategic buffering arc to our northeast and is located along our eastern sea routes. At a time of increasing tension with China, heightened uncertainties around the future of New Caledonia, frustrated independence supporters, and its coveted nickel resource, are worrying.

New Caledonia will hold its second referendum on 4 October as part of the final self-determination process agreed to in the 1998 Noumea Accord. That agreement provides for up to three polls, two years apart, as long as the answer is ‘no’ to independence in each. Even after three ‘no’ votes, pro-independence and pro-France leaders must discuss with Paris the future shape of governance in New Caledonia. So, change is certainly afoot.

This complex, some would say generous, voting process arose from the fact that the 1998 Accord itself postponed by 20 years a vote that was due to take place that year. All parties accepted that the risk of a return to the violence that preceded the accord was too great to proceed then.

In the 2018 vote, 56.7% of eligible voters favoured staying with France and 43.3% voted for independence. The communes voting for independence coincided exactly with indigenous Kanak areas.

Will the result be any different this time?

There certainly are notable differences surrounding this vote. This year there will be 6,000 more voters than in 2018, as 18-year-olds become eligible. Both sides will be targeting them, along with the 33,000 voters who didn’t take part last time. The difference between the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ returns then was 18,000 votes.

The polarisation between the two sides has sharpened since the 2018 vote. Local provincial elections in May 2019 delivered a sobering reduction in numbers for the pro-France side. Independence parties increased their representation from 25 to 26 of the 54 Congress seats, whereas pro-France groups decreased from 29 to 25. A further three seats were won by a new Polynesian islander party which presented as pro-France but has since supported independence groups in Congress votes at times. The non-Kanak islander vote will be an important target for both sides.

A new hardline pro-France coalition, Les Loyalistes, has been formed, sidelining the more moderate Calédonie Ensemble. Its plan is to alter formulas for political representation and financial allocations in its favour.

The extreme independence party, Parti Travailliste, boycotted the vote last time. This time it will participate, joining forces with a new small party, and adding to the efforts of the mainstream Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) to secure more independence votes. For this vote, the FLNKS has updated the independence plan it issued several years ago.

This time, independence leaders have been directly critical of the French government, accusing it of partiality in allowing the pro-France side to use the French flag for campaigning and not agreeing to independence leaders’ wishes to postpone the vote further due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They have also criticised France’s statutorily required statement for voters on the consequences of voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’, saying it doesn’t reflect the bilateral discussions held earlier this year. They accused senior French officials of behaving in a colonialist manner in imposing all-of-France measures and by flouting local Covid-19 restrictions. They noted that the French government recently replaced its most senior ministers who had been well versed in dealing with New Caledonia.

More broadly, independence leaders have become more assertive, opposing recent efforts to salvage a multibillion-dollar nickel project by replacing Brazilian investors with Australian involvement. Mainstream independence leaders instead advocated local control of the project. (Australian New Century Resources subsequently withdrew its interest.) Just days before the vote, independence leaders proposed a resolution in the local congress for local control of broadcast media, tertiary education and certain administrative matters in the provinces.  The Noumea Accord provides for these transfers, but pro-France parties have so far not agreed.

Pro-France leaders have once again played the China card, alleging that New Caledonia would become a Chinese colony if the independence side won.

France is again aiming at organising a vote as impartially as possible, to prevent the result being contested domestically or internationally. Still, after the first vote, the French president expressed pride in New Caledonia’s decision to remain French. The outcome last time was overseen by observers from the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum and 120 international journalists. This year, the effect of Covid-19 travel restrictions means that only the UN will be there in a similar way; its team is currently in quarantine awaiting the vote. The Pacific Islands Forum has designated local diplomats (consuls from Australia, New Zealand and Vanuatu) as its observers. Visiting island ministers, who last time travelled widely, will not be there this time. There will be few, if any, international journalists.

The combination of heightened polarisation, independence groups’ grievances, and weakened external observer scrutiny suggests that the outcome of this vote may be contested.

While any prediction about the result would be brave, even minor shifts from the 2018 outcome will be seen as highly significant by each side, further accentuating differences. That could inhibit early collaboration around a discussion table about the post-Accord future. It is to be hoped that once again we will see a peaceful vote across the Coral Sea as our close neighbour goes to the polls in this unique and remarkable process.