The Fiji Islands are located in the middle of the South Pacific, close to New Zealand and Australia. Numbering three hundred islands, the country is blessed with a mild, tropical climate and a combination of both high and low islands. The population of Fiji is approximately 775,000, with fifty-one percent indigenous Fijians and the rest being a combination of Indo-Fijians, Chinese, European, Pacific Islanders, and others.1 The Indo-Fijians are the largest ethnic group other than the indigenous Fijians and constitute nearly forty-five percent of the population.2

The Fijians are mostly of the Christian faith, whereas the majority of Indo-Fijians belong to other faiths, such as Hinduism and Islam. The country has a multiethnic and multi-religious persona developed over the past two hundred years of physical coexistence.3 While the majority of Fiji’s people would like Fiji to be known and admired for its beautiful beaches, stunning mountain ranges, pristine reefs, and tropical forests, in reality, we are better known for the coups that took place in 1987 and 2000. The coups overthrew elected governments on the basis of indigenous rights. In both cases Christianity was an important ideological aspect of the upheavals. Since the first coup in 1987, a disturbing trend has begun to emerge in Fiji. A number of holy places of the Hindus, such as temples and other places of worship, have been damaged, destroyed, or desecrated by unknown vandals who, in most cases, have not been caught by the police.5 The Fiji Human Rights Commission is aware of these disquieting events and the call in 2002 by some indigenous political and religious opinion-shapers that Fiji should be declared a Christian state.

The Commission has played an important role in reaction to these complaints and has reminded people of the importance of religious freedom to the country, as evidenced both at home, through the 1997 Constitution of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, and abroad, through international human rights instruments to which Fiji is a party. Fiji is a member of the United Nations but unfortunately is not a signatory to the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights6 or to the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.7 It is, however, a signatory to the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.8

This essay first introduces the instruments protecting religious freedom in Fiji and then explains the Fiji Human Rights Commission’s role in protecting this important right.