The world’s smallest republic is Nauru, formerly called Pleasant Island. It is in Micronesia, a subregion of Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its nearest neighbor is an island 190 miles to the east. It is 1,200 miles east of New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean, just south of the Equator. With 11,347 residents in an area of 21-square-kilometers (8.1 square miles), Nauru is the smallest state in the South Pacific, smallest republic and third-smallest state by area in the world, behind only Vatican City and Monaco. It is about a third of the size of Manhattan.
Nauru was settled by people from Micronesia and Polynesia c. 1000 BC.
In 1968, Nauru took over the management of its own affairs when independence was granted by the trusteeship committee of the United Nations. Before 1968, control of Nauru was shifted around among other countries. As the Library of Congress explains:
Prior to independence, from 1947 onward, the island was subject to a United Nations trusteeship agreement involving Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (UK), with Australia being responsible for its administration. This agreement followed a 1920 League of Nations mandate – the predecessor of the United Nations – involving the same countries. Prior to World War I, Germany had been granted Nauru under the 1886 Anglo-German Agreement regarding the Western Pacific, and annexed it in 1888 as part of its Marshall Islands Protectorate. In 1914, Australian forces captured the island and it was subsequently administered by the UK until the League of Nations mandate was drawn up. During World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japan, which held the island between 1942 and 1945.”
Why was Nauru considered so desirable? Extensive deposits of phosphate were discovered there in 1900. As the New York Times put it:
For a million years, migrating birds took a bathroom break on this coral sanctuary, leaving the island’s interior hummock composting rich veins of dense phosphate. For a time, exports of this key fertilizer ingredient made Nauruans among the richest people per capita in the world.”
When valuable resources call, the West disregards natives and their rights. (Of course, arguably, they do that even without the presence of valuable resources.) The Library of Congress reports:
Over the subsequent decades the island was strip-mined of its phosphate deposits. By the 1960s, only the coastal strip around the island was inhabitable; 80% of the island’s surface had been mined, leaving just jagged limestone pinnacles and no fertile land. Australia even offered to resettle the population on an island off the coast of Queensland, but the Nauruans instead opted for self-determination and independence.”
After the phosphate reserves were exhausted, and the island’s environment had been seriously harmed by mining, the trust that had been established to manage the island’s wealth diminished in value. To earn income, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering center. The New York Times reported:
Although this island is one of the most obscure places on the planet, Nauru has lately gained a name for itself in Western international-finance circles. Amid the recent proliferation of money-laundering centers that experts estimate has ballooned into a $5 trillion shadow economy, Nauru is Public Enemy No. 1. . . . . According to the deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, Viktor Melnikov, in 1998 Russian criminals laundered about $70 billion through Nauru, draining off precious hard currency and crippling the former superpower.”
From 2001 to 2008, and again from 2012, Nauru accepted aid from the Australian Government in exchange for letting them send asylum seekers to processing centers established in Nauru. As a result of heavy dependence on Australia, many sources have identified Nauru as a client state of Australia.
In 2016, The Guardian published a horrific exposé about the trauma and abuse inflicted on asylum seekers in Nauru who were refused entry to Australia proper. The so-called “Nauru files” documented assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts, child abuse and squalid living conditions, painting a picture of routine dysfunction and cruelty.
Accommodation in the Nauru offshore processing facility shown in 2012.
In October, 2018, members of the Australian parliament finally began to call publicly for all children and families held on Nauru to be brought to Australia, especially those needing urgent medical treatment. Doctors have also lobbied the government of Australia for this move.
Today Nauru has one main thoroughfare, which is basically a 24-kilometer ring road around the island. It takes about a half hour to drive it, even at a leisurely pace. Since most of the interior consists of abandoned surface mines and is uninhabitable, the nation’s residents live almost exclusively along the ring road.
Nauru is a republic with a parliamentary system of government. The president, currently Baron Waqa, is both head of state and head of government. A 19-member unicameral parliament is elected every three years. The parliament elects the president from its members, and the president appoints a cabinet of five to six members.
Baron Waqa, the incumbent President of Nauru
The country is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Asian Development Bank and the Pacific Islands Forum. The Republic of Nauru became the 189th member of the International Monetary Fund in April 2016.
Life expectancy on Nauru in 2009 was 60.6 years for males and 68.0 years for females. According to the UK Independent:
In Nauru . . . 97 per cent of men and 93 per cent of women are overweight or obese. The region’s diabetes rates are among the world’s worst: 47 per cent in American Samoa, 44 per cent in Tokelau. Preventable conditions such as heart disease and cancer are responsible for three-quarters of deaths in this apparently carefree corner of the planet.”
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