Mapping Security Cooperation in the Pacific Islands (2026 edition)

Abstract

In the 2018 Boe Declaration on Regional Security, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders recognised that the Pacific Islands region is facing ‘an increasingly complex regional security environment driven by multifaceted security challenges’. This raises the question of how Pacific Island states and territories1 will respond to these wide-ranging, but frequently interconnected, challenges, including what role regional security cooperation can play. As in other regions, Pacific Island states have recognised through multiple security declarations that security cooperation can help them address the increasingly transnational and globalised nature of threats — such as pandemic diseases, climate change and transnational crime — that are difficult for states to respond to individually. These declarations reflect a broadening understanding of ‘security’ that has occurred globally, particularly in the past decade, with security challenges no longer narrowly defined as primarily military matters, but now covering a wide range of cross-cutting and transnational issues. Since the adoption of the PIF Leaders’ Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration in September 2025, foregrounding peace in Pacific security is a priority for the region. The purpose of this Research Paper is to identify and map the various cooperative security agreements, arrangements and institutions between and among states and territories in the Pacific Islands region, and their partners. Mapping aids ongoing analysis of overlaps and gaps and informs our subsequent proposals on how security cooperation could be best orientated to address current and future regional security challenges. While this paper focuses on state-centred cooperation, we acknowledge that a range of non-state actors play an important role in humanitarian response and peacebuilding, both formally and informally, and are part of the wider regional security landscape (Bhagwan- Rolls and Evans 2020). Show more