Dr Sharon McLennan

News of Fiji’s drug and HIV crisis has reached the BBC:

Fiji has become a major Pacific trafficking hub for crystal meth over the past 15 years. A large part of this is due to the country’s geographic location between East Asia and the Americas – some of the world’s biggest manufacturers of the drug – and Australia and New Zealand – the world’s highest-paying markets. During that same period, meth has spilled into and spread throughout local communities, developing into a crisis that, like HIV, was recently declared a “national emergency”. And according to those on the frontlines, the age of users is trending downwards.

The implications of this are terrifying, and something I’ve seen before.

My academic career is split in two geographically. My postgraduate research was in Central America, specifically Honduras. I did my master’s and PhD research there, looking at medical volunteering and networking for development. My post-PhD work has been in the Pacific, including my current research on health resilience in Fiji.

While the two contexts are very different, there is now a common link: drug trafficking.

I first visited Honduras in 2000, did my master’s research there in 2004-5 (pregnant!) and returned there for PhD fieldwork visit in 2009 with a nearly 4-year old. I reassured my mother that all would be fine, her grandchild would be ok, we would be safe.

Within three weeks of our arrival the president was deported in a military-led and US-supported coup. The country descended into chaos. We were safe where we were, and I was able to complete the PhD (with a significant change in focus) and get my family home safely, but the country was no longer a safe place. San Pedro Sula, the largest city in the country, soon became the world’s murder capital, with the highest homicide rate in the world outside war zones.

This violence was the result of multiple factors. Political instability, corruption and repression resulting from the coup were a major factor. As was increased extradition of gang members from the US to Central America. This all fueled an already existing drug trafficking network (Honduras was already used by drug traffickers as a bridge between Colombia and Mexico), as criminal groups took advantage of the political turmoil and corruption to expand their activities.

When I returned to visit Honduras in 2018 violence was rife, family and friends routinely carried guns and mordidas (bribes), large areas of major cities were too dangerous to travel though, rural farms had become landing strips for drug traffickers, and cocaine was readily available in neighborhood bars.

In the interim, my research focus had shifted to the Pacific, and Fiji in particular. And what I have observed in the last couple of years terrifies me. Like Honduras, Fiji is now a hub for the traffickers. As the BBC article and others have highlighted, lucrative markets in New Zealand and Australia, combined with Fiji’s location as stopping point in the vast Pacific Ocean, have made it a target. As in Central America, a deliberate effort appears to have been made to cultivate addiction, and therefore a willing local workforce to protect and move drugs though the country.

Fiji is not the safe place it was a decade ago, but thankfully it has not reached the levels of violence seen in Honduras – and I pray it never will. However, the drug trade has fuelled another crisis, the huge surge in HIV and STDs. My fear is this is the tip of the iceberg. Fiji is a country with history of coups and political instability. Big divisions remain. And the cartels are well versed in taking advantage of division and instability.

Fiji’s advantage is a strong traditional base. Unlike Central America, where 500+ years of brutal colonisation have all but annihilated traditional culture and connections, Fijians retain a strong connection to each other, to the vanua (the land, and the cultural, social and spiritual identity of Indigenous Fijians). A strong traditional leadership base has been retained. This, I believe, is where hope begins. With unity, connection and care.

Beyond this, a regional approach is vital. This must include Australia and New Zealand, the end markets in this drug trafficking route, and who are both driving the demand for drugs that threatens Pacific nations, and who also suffer the effects of trafficking and addiction.

If the Pacific is to avoid its children becoming victims in the cartel’s ruthless drive for profit, whether to violence or HIV, a concerted effort is required. The alternative will be devastating.