Bringing Parliaments and People Together in the South Pacific

In early 2025, the Solonian Democracy Institute was invited to support the UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji with the Knowledge Exchange Workshop for Pacific Parliaments, hosted at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS).

At the workshop, participants were introduced to Citizens' Foundation and TRM/Episdemos, two types of democratic decision-making software that can be used by parliamentary committees to get citizen feedback during the process of drafting legislation. In addition, Dr. Fuller advised the UNDP on principles of digital democracy, how to avoid common pitfalls and how to deepen the level of participation with their citizens.

Many Pacific Island countries are composed of hundreds of islands. For example, the Solomon Islands are a chain of almost 1000 islands (147 of which are inhabited) spread over almost 30 000 square kilometers. The situation of the Marshall Islands is even more extreme with approximately 180 square kilometers of land mass dispersed over close to 2 million square kilometers of ocean. Unsurprisingly, one of the key challenges for many Pacific Island countries is that citizens are dispersed over large distances, with air travel for in-person meetings often prohibitively expensive.

Digital tools can thus help to fill a gap, allowing citizens to meaningfully participate in the legislative process, regardless of their location. Furthermore, the AI-facilitated multilingual and auto-translation capabilities of the tools showcased at PIFS allows people to take part in their own language, improving accessibility and helping to preserve the cultural heritage of Oceanic languages, such as Fijian and Samoan.

Some Pacific Island parliaments already use digital tools for organizational tasks such as time management and vote recording. Democracy technology can add a new dimension to this by enabling a wider interaction with the community to take place, and ensuring that all aspects of legislation are fully considered prior to implementation.

Dr. Fuller welcomed the initiative, commenting: "Our partners at the UN made it clear that they weren't aiming for a window-dressing exercise, but really wanted to help facilitate meaningful democratic participation on the ground, and that was very encouraging to see."