Civil Unrest and The Fight for Independence in New Caledonia w Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem: 22 May, 2024

Last week, New Caledonia became the site of widespread civil unrest and mass riots. Protests erupted in response to a decision made by the French government to grant voting rights to residents of New Caledonia who had been residing on the Island for at Least 10 years, overturning a previous constitutional amendment that only permitted the Island’s indigenous Kanak population and residents residing on the Island before 1998 to vote in local elections. 

New Caledonia’s Indigenous Kanak people, who have largely resisted French rule and have campaigned for independence for several generations, said that the constitutional amendment would undermine their push for independence and give greater preference to newer French settlers. 

Oto spoke to Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem, a professor of Pacific studies at the university of Auckland, to discuss the context behind the current unrest, and the Kanak independence movement as a whole.