#Chequebook free

Estonia provided more than US$225,000 to Fiji in 2017 to host its Presidency, a large chunk of the FJ$11 million (US$5.35 million) pool of donations received by the COP23 Presidency Trust Fund. Nonetheless, in light of the financial demands of the UNFCCC presidency, many donors provided aid to Fiji, including Estonia. Given the immense cost of hosting such a large international conference – France is said to have spent €187 million (US$201 million) on the 2015 COP meeting that resulted in the Paris Agreement – the 2017 conference was held in Bonn, Germany. In 2017, Fiji presided over the annual Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

#Chequebook free

Traditionally, states in the Compact of Free Association have been strongly pro-Israel and have consistently voted with the US, Israel and a handful of other nations in UN resolutions concerning Israel and Palestine.ĭespite this effort, the Slovenian bid for a Security Council seat eventually lost out to Azerbaijan after an unprecedented 16 rounds of voting. Slovenian media noted that its bid had the strong support of the US, due to concerns over rival candidate Azerbaijan’s position on UN membership of Palestine. That year also saw Slovenia providing close to US$44,000 in one-off aid, earmarked for water supply, to the three nations in a Compact of Free Association with the United States – Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. New Zealand media reported that Hungary and Slovenia sought to shore up support of their respective bids: while Hungary was looking to develop bilateral ties with a number of Pacific nations, Slovenia sought observer status at the Melanesian Spearhead Group. In 2011, Slovenia was one of the three candidates vying for the European seat for the 2012–13 Security Council term. Using the findings from the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Aid Map, we look at three of these donors and find that their increased aid activity in the Pacific almost all coincides with their bids for non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council. The provision of these grants, while small in comparison to those of traditional donors such as Australia, is underpinned not by diplomatic recognition but by an effort to win influence and support for donor nations’ activities in international organisations.

In recent years, however, there has been a significant uptick in such diplomacy by donors not traditionally involved in the region: for instance, the number of grants of less than US$500,000 being provided by these donors to the Pacific increased from 191 in 2012 to 274 in 2017. With up to 12 votes available in the Pacific, the support of the region is critical for any initiative to succeed in the UN General Assembly or in other international organisations.