The long road to independence

It is the crowds of the big days in the House of Representatives of Bougainville, a territory attached to Papua-New Guinea populated by around 300,000 inhabitants, and whose area is equivalent to Montreal island 20 times. On the horizon, the Pacific rushes as far as the eye can see, bordering the lush shores of its two main islands from which huge volcanoes arise.

Inside the wooden building, gathered in a small hemicycle, around twenty deputies have one by one “preparation report for independence”. By 2027, each district will have to comply with a series of sustainable development objectives, modeled on those of the UN. Bougainville will then officially proclaim its independence from Papua-New Guinea, becoming 194^e State of the planet.

In a corner of the hemicycle, the president of the small archipelago, Ishmael Toroama, elected in 2020, follows the debates with emotion.

This quest for independence dates back several decades.

Appointed from the French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, the first European to discover this region of the Pacific in the 18th^e A century, the place has experienced several colonizations. The Germans first annexed it in 1899, before converting the population to Christianity and implanting the culture of coconut.

Germany was then driven by Australia during the First World War. Apart from a brief Japanese incursion in the 1940s, Bougainville remained colonized by the Australians until 1975. That year, Canberra granted his independence to Papua-New Guinea and attached Bougainville there.

At the time, already, the discontent rises among its inhabitants: Papua has neither the same culture, nor the same languages, nor the same ethnic groups as Bougainville, also located more than a thousand kilometers. Geographically and culturally, Bougainville is closer to the Salomon Islands, just 5 kilometers away.

In 1989, a war broke out between separatists and Papuan authorities. The conflict lasts almost 10 years and killed nearly 20,000 people.

This morning in May, this conflict is reflected in the collective memory. On the edges of a cove licked by the waves, around twenty men dig the ground using shovels and picks. A common pit dating from the civil war is exhumed. First bones soon emerge from the sandy soil. The remains of one arm, several skulls, old plastic boots survived at 30 years old. In total, 16 bodies are unearthed under the eyes of the families of the deceased, assisting the scene in silence.

Most bodies have bullet impacts. “We attacked a convoy of the Papuan army when things went wrong. My comrades were captured before being executed with a bullet in the head. The women of the neighboring village were forced to dig the pit with bare hands and then bury them there, ”says Joe Pice, a veteran who survived the massacre.

A peace treaty, signed in 2001, granted a large autonomy to Bougainville. But the break with Papua is consumed. The dream of sovereignty remains and there is a referendum there in 2019. Independence obtains 98 % of the vote. According to the Papuan Constitution, the national parliament must confirm independence by a solemn vote. However, this one has still not taken place. Papua, which fears that Bougainville’s independence will open the secession for other provinces, drags the procedure.

How to baptize a country?

In March 2025, Bougainville therefore launched an ultimatum and unilaterally fixed its “day of independence” on 1^is September 2027. The countdown has started. Within two years, Bougainville will have to stand on its own two feet: the current embryo of autonomous government must have turned into a real state, a new currency will have to be created, established diplomatic relations, and a written constitution. The name envisaged for the new country, the Republic of the Northern Solomon Islands, does not however make consensus. “This name badly reflects our identity. We are certainly closer to the Salomon Islands, but we remain a separate nation. I propose to keep the name of Bougainville, even if it is a foreign name, because this is how we have always called ourselves, ”explains a minister.

Expectations are strong among the population. Unlike most Pacific micro-states, Bougainville has an appreciable area and natural resources. Its basement would contain 5 million tonnes of copper and 400 tonnes of gold. Before the civil war, the place was one of the most important producers of cocoa and coconut in Oceania. Production has only partially restored. Territorial waters, very fishy, finally conceal 6 % of the world’s stock of tuna.

Aware of these riches, the Bougainvillais – whose overwhelming majority has neither access to running water nor electricity – count on independence to improve their standard of living.

“Proclaiming independence is the easy part”

The challenge that awaits the future state of Bougainville promises to be titanic. More than 90 % of the tax resources of the autonomous government come from Papua today. Without adequate preparation, independence could quickly turn to economical fiasco.

“Proclaiming independence is the easy part. Govern is something else. Residents want independence, but not at the cost of impoverishment. They especially aspire to a better future for their children, ”warns Fidelis Semoso, farmer and unhappy candidate for the presidency in 2020.

The sixties underlines that Bougainville has no industry to refine its raw materials. Cocoa and coconuts are sent to Papua to be transformed, and the absence of freezing factory prevents fishermen from exporting their catches.

Global geopolitics offers a springboard to Bougainville authorities.

The west of the Pacific becomes a major field of confrontation between China and the United States. For the past decade, Beijing and Washington have been courting the regional states: here to build a military base, there to establish diplomatic alliances in the event of a conflict in Taiwan. Located in the heart of this new chessboard, Bougainville caresses the idea of allying financially and politically to one of the two superpowers to succeed in its accession to independence.

Mr. Tanis is now responsible for international government relations. Bougainville notably plans to grant mining operations and could reopen a former military aerodrome used by the United States during the Second World War.

Bougainville’s strategic value has not escaped Chinese and American strategists. As early as 2019, Beijing proposed to invest in infrastructure and support the independence process. In 2024, the Heritage Foundation, a reflection group close to the Trump administration, published a long note¹ I encourage the United States to counter Chinese influence in Bougainville. “The island can play a strategic role in the event of a military operation, as a logistics hub in the west of the Pacific,” notes the document. When Bougainville drops the moorings of Papua, it could immediately be trained in the Sino-American maelström. The high seas of independence promises to be restless.

1. Lisez le rapport « Bougainville : The U.S. Needs a Proactive Approach Toward the Potential New Country in the Pacific » (en anglais)