"For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it." - Eleanor Roosevelt.

Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa named the ocean he saw in 1513 the Mal del Sur, or South Sea in English.

Seven years later, in 1520, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan renamed the ocean Mar Pacifico, which means "peaceful sea" in Portuguese.

Magellan had journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean to seek a western route to the Spice Islands via South America. After braving perilous seas and navigating through what is now known as the Straits of Magellan, his small fleet entered an unfamiliar ocean in late 1520. Due to the calmness of the water at the time, he called this body of water the Pacific.

When Magellan and his crew entered the Pacific Ocean after their long journey, they thought that the Spice Islands were close at hand. Little did they know that their destination remained thousands of miles away. Covering approximately 155 million square kilometres (59 square miles), the explorers had ventured into the largest ocean on earth.

For the late Tongan social anthropologist, Epeli Hau'ofa, the Pacific Ocean is even bigger than that.   In his books, We Are the Ocean, Our Sea of Islands, and others he sets out his ideas for the emergence of a stronger and freer Oceania.

A review by Angie Richard’s online shows that in 1994 Hau'ofa wrote in Our Sea of Islands: The Ocean is vast, Oceania is expanding. Oceania is hospitable and generous, Oceania is humanity rising from the depths of brine and regions of fire deeper still, Oceania is us.

We are the sea, we are the ocean, we must wake up to this ancient truth and together use it to overturn all hegemonic views that ultimately aim to confine us again, physically and psychologically, in the tiny spaces that we have resisted accepting as our sole appointed places and from which we have recently liberated ourselves.

We must not allow anyone to belittle us again, and take away our freedom.

Revisiting the expansive worldview of indigenous Pacific Islander cosmologies, Our Sea of Islands argues that developing Pacific Island states are not small and dependent as they are often referred to by developed nations. Rather, they are vast, interconnected, and richly diverse.

Instead of viewing Pacific people as islands in the far sea in the Pacific Ocean, they should be considered as a sea of islands, Hau'ofa argues.

He expresses his concern with the environment and suggests that the most important role that the "people of the sea" can assume is as custodians of the Pacific.

Leaders of The Pacific Island Forum (PIF) have heeded that call.

In a speech in the Parliament in early August this year, Fiji's prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka explained to his countrymen and women about the Proposal for the Ocean of Peace.

“Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank you for this opportunity to inform the House of the progress in the development of the concept of the Pacific as the ‘Ocean of Peace.”

This week, officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are taking the Concept through the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) consultation process.

On 15 November 1520, long after the first Pacific islanders had reached this ocean, Ferdinand Magellan sailed into the Mar del Sur (The South Sea – named by Vasco Nunez Balboa, Spanish Explorer and Conquistador) and renamed it Mar Pacifico – the Pacific Ocean – because of its calm waters.

The waters of the Pacific are not always calm, they can be stormy, violent and threatening. However, as Epeli Hau’ofa noted, “Just as the sea is an open and ever-flowing reality, so should our oceanic identity transcend all forms of insularity, to become one that is openly searching, inventive, and welcoming.” [Epeli Hau’ofa, We Are the Ocean: Selected Works]

It is fitting therefore, Sir, that at a time of geo-strategic tension, economic uncertainty, and a changing climatic environment, those who are the ‘custodians of the ocean’ welcome the proposal that the Pacific be an Ocean of Peace, and agree to adopt some high-level principles, to guide efforts to realise this ambition and embed peace as a cornerstone of future policies and strategies.

After having presented to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders at their meeting in Rarotonga in November 2023, the Leaders have tasked the PIF Secretariat to further develop the Ocean of Peace concept for consideration at the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga later.

This directive has since inspired deep reflections across the region about the opportunities inherent in this concept. It has also caught the attention of international leaders like President Biden of the USA, President Xi Jing Ping of China, the Emperor of Japan and his Prime Minister, Prime Minister Kishida, and the Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister Modi and I am sure Her Excellency President of India, who is currently in Fiji today.

As a region, the Pacific knows the value of peace as we lived through the horrors of its absence. This ocean and its diverse and vibrant lands have been a theatre of the two World Wars, and a testing ground for the most dangerous weapons – the impacts of which are still felt today. Yet, this is not a passive region without agency; the collective voice of the Pacific is as loud as it is profound and proud. Building Pacific regionalism over many decades, the Forum Family have created a strong basis to give effect to this vision, of advancing the region as an Ocean of Peace – the greatest area of the Globe under Christianity yet so fragile and prone to conflicts.

The idea is still being developed by the Forum Secretariat and they have co-opted the assistance of former secretaries-general of the PIF. Samoa is represented by Tuiloma Neroni Slade, a former PIF secretary-general.

On his return from talks in Papua New Guinea, he told TA'I'S TAKE that the ongoing talks would continue for a while yet as they could also affect the nuclear-free decision taken in Tonga.

Ia manuia lava feutagaiga mo le faatinoina o le Vasa Filemu Saogalemu faapea le vaiaso fou.