What Is the Boe Declaration? Pacific Regional Security Explained

What the Boe Declaration is

The Boe Declaration on Regional Security is a political declaration by the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum, adopted on September 5, 2018 at their meeting in Nauru (Forum Secretariat, Boe Declaration text). Boe is the district of Nauru where the meeting took place. It is not a treaty and it does not create a force or a fund. Its job is to set out a shared definition of security that every Forum member has signed up to, so that regional and national work can be organised around the same list of threats.

The text opens by reaffirming the Biketawa Declaration of 2000 and its principles: good governance, the liberty of the individual under the law, democratic processes, and recognition that small members are vulnerable to threats to their security (Forum Secretariat, Boe Declaration text). It recalls that leaders agreed at their 2017 meeting in Apia, Samoa, to build on Biketawa and other Forum security declarations as the foundation for future regional responses. It also restates the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of members, which runs through every Forum security instrument.

What the declaration actually says

The operative part has ten short commitments (Forum Secretariat, Boe Declaration text). The ones that matter most for island governments are these:

• Climate first. Leaders reaffirm that climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific, and commit to implementing the Paris Agreement.
• A crowded region. Leaders recognise an increasingly complex security environment and a dynamic geopolitical environment leading to an increasingly crowded and complex region.
• Sovereignty. Leaders assert the sovereign right of every member to conduct its national affairs free of external interference and coercion, and the right of members to address security issues individually and collectively.
• An expanded concept of security. Traditional and non-traditional threats, with increasing emphasis on human security (including humanitarian assistance), environmental and resource security, transnational crime, and cybersecurity.
• National strategies. Because national security affects regional security, members commit to developing national security strategies and strengthening national security capacity, including through training.
• Regional architecture. Members commit to strengthen existing regional security bodies, including the regional law enforcement secretariats, to improve coordination, share information, develop early warning and provide regional security analysis.

Read together, the declaration does two things. It tells partners that the region defines its own security priorities, and it puts climate change, fisheries, drugs and cyber on the same footing as the political crises that Biketawa was written for.

Biketawa and Boe: how the two fit together

The two declarations are often searched together, and they do different jobs. Biketawa (2000) is the mechanism: it sets out how the Forum responds collectively when a member faces a crisis, and it has been used for the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, the COVID-19 response, and the regional fuel crisis in May 2026. Boe (2018) is the scope: it widens the range of threats that regional cooperation is meant to cover. ISPI's Biketawa Declaration explainer covers each invocation with its primary sources.

The 2019 Action Plan: six focus areas

Leaders meeting in Tuvalu in 2019 endorsed an Action Plan to implement the declaration (Boe Declaration Action Plan; Action Plan PDF). It organises the work into six strategic focus areas:

1. Climate security
2. Human security and humanitarian assistance
3. Environment and resource security
4. Transnational crime
5. Cyber-enabled crime and cybersecurity
6. Creating an enabling environment for implementation, including an appropriate coordination mechanism

The plan says it will be supplemented by a rolling activity matrix reviewed each year by members through the Forum Officials Sub-Committee on Regional Security, which it describes as newly established (Action Plan PDF). It also defines a national security strategy as an adaptable framework for a country to meet the basic needs and security concerns of its citizens and to address external and internal threats, and it asks members to build the capacity to implement one.

That request is where many small island governments feel the gap. A national security strategy takes analysts, legal advice, consultation and a budget line, and small public services have to find those from the same people who run everything else. ISPI's Tuvalu national security policy analysis looks at one recent example of a member doing that work. WP-10: Democratic Resilience in the Pacific and PB-18: Small States, Large Pressures set out ISPI's view of why technical and analytical capacity, rather than declarations, decides how well island governments handle outside pressure.

What Boe has produced so far

The Pacific Fusion Centre. The Forum Secretariat describes the Pacific Fusion Centre as an outcome of the regional security priorities leaders identified in the Boe Declaration (Forum Secretariat, June 6, 2023). It operates under a charter endorsed by the Forum Officials Committee, and the Secretariat says this keeps its work aligned with the Forum security architecture through the officials' Sub-Committee on Regional Security. Its permanent offices opened in Port Vila, Vanuatu on June 6, 2023, and Vanuatu and the Centre signed a host agreement on February 23, 2024 formally establishing its regional headquarters there (Forum Secretariat, Feb. 23, 2024). The Centre delivers strategic analysis and training against the Boe priorities for policy makers and security officials in member states and regional organisations.A shared vocabulary. Later Forum documents keep coming back to Boe. The 2025 Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration recalls the Boe Declaration alongside Biketawa in its preamble, and the 2025 leaders' communiqué asked that a coordinated regional response to synthetic drugs be considered within the review of the Boe Action Plan (54th Forum Leaders Communiqué, Sept. 2025). That last line is worth noting: it means the Action Plan is formally under review.The Ocean of Peace. In September 2025, leaders in Honiara endorsed the Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration, a concept introduced by Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka (54th Forum Leaders Communiqué, Sept. 2025). Fiji's foreign ministry quoted him saying the new declaration brings the Ocean of Peace together with the Boe Declaration (Fiji Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sept. 11, 2025). ISPI's analysis of the July 2026 missile test and the Ocean of Peace looks at how that framing was tested in 2026.

Why it matters for island governments and Hawaiʻi

For a Pacific island government, Boe is the reference document that a partner, a donor or a regional body will expect national plans to line up with. Each of its threat areas maps onto practical work that ISPI tracks: fisheries enforcement under resource security (see the IUU fishing explainer), synthetic drug trafficking under transnational crime (see CM-13: Pacific Drug Trafficking Networks and the Pacific drug trafficking analysis), subsea and government networks under cybersecurity (see the undersea cables explainer), and climate-driven disasters under climate security (see CM-06: Climate Security and Island Public Safety).

For Hawaiʻi and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific, the Boe categories are a useful way to read what Forum members ask of partners. Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, the three freely associated states, are full Forum members, so the same framing shows up in conversations about policing support, disaster assistance and maritime surveillance in the region. ISPI's Pacific Islands Forum explainer sets out who the members are and how decisions are made.

There are honest limits. A declaration does not fund itself, and Boe leaves implementation to members and regional agencies with very different resources. The expanded concept of security also means almost everything can be filed under security, which makes prioritisation harder for small administrations. And debates since 2022 about bilateral security agreements, including the Solomon Islands regional security treaty proposal discussed before the 55th Forum Leaders Meeting in Palau, show that members still disagree on how much of the region's security should run through the Forum and how much through individual partners. WP-01 explains why frameworks written for larger states often fit islands poorly, which is part of why a region-made document like Boe matters.

What to watch next

• The Boe Action Plan review. The 2025 communiqué tied a regional drugs response to the review (54th Forum Leaders Communiqué, Sept. 2025). Watch for a revised plan and whether it adds new focus areas or resourcing.
• National security strategies. How many members have adopted a strategy, and whether they publish them, is the clearest measure of the declaration's commitment (viii).
• Fusion Centre analysis. Whether the Centre's assessments reach the officials who need them, and whether members fund analysts' time, will shape its value.
• The relationship with the Ocean of Peace. Whether leaders treat the 2025 declaration as an add-on to Boe or as its successor framing.

For background on the wider regional agenda, see ISPI's Samoa Pathway explainer and Pacific Islands Forum explainer.

ISPI publishes its research free under CC BY 4.0. If your government, agency or organization needs a briefing on regional security frameworks, a national security strategy or partner arrangements, you can commission research from ISPI. ISPI is a nonprofit organization; its application for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status is pending. Contributions are not tax-deductible until IRS recognition is granted.

Sources

1. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, “Boe Declaration on Regional Security,” September 5, 2018
2. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Boe Declaration (PDF)
3. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, “Boe Declaration Action Plan” (publication page)
4. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Action Plan to Implement the Boe Declaration on Regional Security (PDF)
5. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, “Biketawa Declaration”
6. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, “SG Puna welcomes official opening of the Pacific Fusion Centre,” June 6, 2023
7. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, “Pacific Fusion Centre, Vanuatu sign formal host country agreement,” February 23, 2024
8. Pacific Islands Forum, Fifty-Fourth Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Communiqué, Honiara, September 2025 (PDF)
9. Fiji Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Ocean of Peace declaration endorsed at Pacific Leaders meeting in Honiara,” September 11, 2025
10. ISPI papers: CM-06, CM-13, WP-10, PB-18, WP-01