Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific

Volume 72, No. 3

 

The Noumea Accord: Decolonization Without Independence in New Caledonia?
By David A. Chappell

 

Abstract

The decolonization of French New Caledonia has been a political conundrum because the indigenous Kanak number only about 45 percent of the population, and the immigrant minorities prefer continued help and protection from Paris. Postwar nationalism has featured many efforts at peaceful protest and cultural assertion but also periodic confrontation and, in the 1980s especially, violence. The 1988 Matignon Accord promised more aid to Kanak regions and a referendum on independence in 1998, but the latter was really the ratification of a negotiated, consensual agreement among France, the Kanak liberation front, and a coalition of local loyalists. The Noumea Accord of May 1998 postponed a vote on sovereignty for another 15-20 years, but it formally recognized the Kanak people as having suffered from colonialism and placed their culture(s) at the center of the identity of a new, more autonomous territory with its own citizenship (in addition to French) and incremental governing powers delegated to Noumea by Paris over the next generation. Though criticized by those on both extremes of the political spectrum, the agreement is also seen as a precedent-setting compromise for decolonization in a multiethnic state. The real challenge will be to develop a political center after years of polarization.