In May 2024, riots roared across the French Overseas Territory of New Caledonia due to the French government’s implementation of a new voting amendment. The legislation, passed by politicians across the ocean in Paris, allowed for residents who have been on the island for at least 10 years to vote in elections and participate civically. 

However, the Indigenous Kanaks, who make up 41% of the country’s population, have lived through many migration efforts by the French government since the 1960s. These attempts have encouraged French residents to migrate to the territory, actively displacing and lessening the influence that the Kanak have over their native land. 

For decades, tensions have continued rising between the island's pro-independence and loyalist parties. The Kanak have continuously suffered from the neglect of the French government and face numerous socioeconomic challenges, such as unemployment, reliance on subsistence farming, and land dispossession. 

This amendment is seen as just an additional move to disregard and overlook the struggles and needs of the island’s native population. 

Between the 1960s and 1980s, the movement for independence within New Caledonia swept across the country’s political scene, and in 1988, a referendum for independence was accepted: the Nouméa Accord. 

This frustration has now taken a new front. 

Native Kanak peoples seeking the autonomy that was gradually promised in the 1989 Nouméa accord feel that any progress has effectively been walked back through this motion, a step that many see as further reducing the influence they have in their homeland by those who are supposed to represent their needs in their politics.  

Even UN experts have been alarmed by the situation, stating: “The French government has failed to respect the basic rights to participation, consultation and free, prior, informed consent of the Kanak Indigenous Peoples and its institutions, including the Customary Senate.”

Beginning in February 2024, Kanak people have taken to the streets in response to protest this measure. Still, due to a lack of dialogue, violence has started to emerge out of these demonstrations. In response, the military has utilized what many have referred to as excessive force, leading to today with the deaths of 14 Kanaks, over 2000 arrests, and nearly 1 billion euros of damage. A large factory was burnt down in Nouméa, alongside the destruction of other property like businesses and cars. 

On the 16th of May, the French government even banned TikTok on the island, aiming further to reduce the spreading of communication and anti-government sentiment. The app’s restrictions were lifted on the 29th as violence began to lighten up due to a French military operation that targeted those organizing. 

Yet, attacks persist across the country as tensions run high between the natives of the New Caledonian islands and the police and military forces, who just months ago employed any means necessary to suppress their voices and resentment over the poor treatment of their communities within the island’s political sphere. A strong police presence remains in many neighborhoods and urban areas across the country, signaling to the Kanak that those who claim to be interested in their liberation still don’t trust or understand them. 

New Caledonia’s status as an overseas territory, especially in the 21st century, is incredibly unique and repeatedly displays the inadequacy of colonial policies that persist in the modern era. 

Roughly 71 overseas territories exist globally, and while not all have created difficult situations for Indigenous populations’ homelands, New Caledonia exemplifies how governments that are so detached can be wholly inadequate for meeting the needs of the people that they have jurisdiction over. 

As this situation unfolds, the international community will continue to watch how poorly this form of governance can manifest itself upon those it is designed to protect.