Tui Nayau: HIV and drug crisis ‘consuming our own’

The HIV epidemic, drugs and unemployment are “burying our people”.

This is the statement by Turaga na Tui Nayau, Tui Lau and Sau ni Vanua o Lau Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara, as he calls for urgent legal reform and stronger traditional structures to confront the crises affecting iTaukei communities.

In a statement titled A Nation at a Crossroads: Speaking Truth With Love for Fiji, Ratu Tevita said Fiji’s national conversation needed to focus more sharply on problems directly affecting families and young people.

He highlighted HIV as an immediate national emergency, pointing to figures presented at the Pacific HIV Symposium in Nadi this week.

“At the Pacific HIV Symposium in Nadi this week, His Excellency the President confirmed 2,016 HIV diagnoses in 2025 - a 27 per cent rise on the previous year, and the highest total since surveillance began in 1989. Diagnoses among children and teenagers aged 10 to 19 rose by 45 per cent. Roughly one in every 60 adults is now affected. And approximately 90 per cent of new diagnoses are among iTaukei. Let that last figure sink in: this is not a crisis in the abstract, it is ours, and it is consuming our own.”

Ratu Tevita said Government and Parliament needed to urgently address legislation identified by the Fiji Medical Association as a barrier to early detection, treatment access and contact tracing.

“The Fiji Medical Association has correctly identified outdated legislation as a barrier to early detection, treatment access and contact tracing. I call on Government and Parliament to act with urgency. Legal reform here is not a moral compromise; it is a moral imperative, and bureaucratic inertia must not cost us another generation.”

‘Symptom of something deeper’

Ratu Tevita said HIV could not be viewed solely as a health issue.

“And let us be honest: HIV is not only a health crisis. It is a symptom of something deeper - the fracturing of our social fabric and the loss of the protective embrace of our traditional structures. When our families are broken and our tokatoka, mataqali and yavusa weakened, our young are left exposed to the forces that destroy them.”

He called on iTaukei communities and leaders to take greater responsibility for addressing the problems affecting their people.

“I say this not as a critic standing outside but as a chief standing within: it is time for the iTaukei to walk the talk. We have professed Christianity for generations, yet iTaukei make up 74 per cent of our prison population. We speak of community and vanua, yet our young men are falling to drugs and violence. The murders, the robberies, the HIV crisis, the methamphetamine epidemic - who bears the heaviest burden? It is us. And that is a severe indictment upon our collective leadership.”

Questions spending priorities

Ratu Tevita acknowledged Australia’s support for Fiji’s HIV response, including FJ$23.5 million announced by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong on August 6, which he said took Australia’s total support beyond FJ$40 million.

However, he questioned the reported spending on the Pre-COP31 meetings scheduled for Nadi from October 5 to 8.

“It is because we are friends that I can ask what comes next without causing offence. Australia has reportedly committed close to A$20 million - about FJ$31 million - on the Pre-COP31 meetings it brings to Nadi from 5 to 8 October. Four days will cost more than the largest single HIV commitment Australia has made to us. Is that the right proportion?”

He said climate change remained a serious challenge, particularly as communities faced relocation, but argued Fiji also needed to confront immediate social crises.

“Fiji has too often hosted grand conferences that consume resources without measurable outcomes for ordinary Fijians. Climate change, meanwhile, is already moving our villages - six have relocated and dozens more are earmarked - and I do not diminish that for a moment. But HIV, drugs and unemployment are burying our people this year. Neither crisis cancels the other, yet only one can be slowed within the life of a single government. Our priorities must reflect that.”

Calls for GCC constitutional protection

Ratu Tevita also called for the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) to be entrenched in the Constitution.

He declared his interest as one of the GCC’s deputy chairmen and said its restoration by the Government in 2023 through ordinary legislation did not provide sufficient protection.

“This Government restored the Great Council of Chiefs in 2023, and that was right - but it did so by ordinary legislation. What an Act of Parliament gives, an Act of Parliament can take back, and a decree can take faster. That is not hypothetical; it is what happened in 2012. I declare my interest openly: I serve as one of the Council's deputy chairmen. If the GCC is to carry real, mandated responsibility for iTaukei welfare and advancement, its mandate must be entrenched in the Constitution, not left to a simple majority. Village by-laws granting chiefs appropriate authority in their communities also remain unintroduced; that absence weakens traditional governance where it matters most, and must be urgently addressed.”

‘Accountability flows in all directions’

Ratu Tevita said responsibility for addressing Fiji’s challenges did not rest with Government alone.

“So we cannot keep pointing at government alone. Government must be held to account - absolutely. But accountability flows in all directions: to our chiefs, our faith leaders, our parents, our youth.”

He called for reflection and the strengthening of traditional social structures while emphasising that Fiji belonged to all its people.

“To my fellow iTaukei: I speak with love, not accusation, and as one of you, not above you. The way forward is not found in waiting for a government to rescue us, nor in surrendering our identity to modernity, but in the disciplined and dignified strengthening of who we are. That work begins within each of us. Fiji is for all of us, or it is for none of us.”