Papua New Guinea and Fiji have reasserted their commitment to collaborate on
training of PNGDF soldiers at the Black Rock Facility in Nadi, Fiji.

The Black Rock Camp is a state of the art peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief facility which boasts a large-scale relief warehouse, logistics headquarters
necessary to coordinate work on relief response, a UN School, a medical center, and
physical training facilities.

The facility was build by Australia at a cost of AUD180 million.

The proposed training is intended to prepare PNG soldiers for deployment locally,
regionally and internationally on UN security and peacekeeping operations as well as
to train and prepare them to respond appropriately to any natural and man-made
disasters.

This was conveyed by Minister of Defence Dr. Billy Joseph and his Fijian counterpart
Pio Tikoduadua at a bilateral meeting held yesterday on the occasion of Minister
Joseph’s official visit to the Black Rock training camp in Nadi.

The collaboration initiative was first discussed between the Ministers three weeks ago
in Tokyo at the margins of the 2nd Japan Pacific Islands Defence Dialogue.

Minister Joseph was at the training facility in Nadi to iron out the finer details of the proposed
long-term arrangement as well as to explore the opportunity for PNGDF soldiers to
undertake short-term capacity building courses at the facility.

Minister Joseph said “PNG and Fiji are the only countries in the Pacific with bigger
military and are connected through our strong Melanesian heritage yet we don’t have
any working collaborative arrangement between our armed forces.

There is an MoU drafted in 2019 but has not been finalized so we have agreed to revisit and progress this document immediately and work within its frameworks to capture our intention to train our soldiers at the Black Rock training facility.

This is also part of the broader responsibility for the Pacific to work together to take care of our own national and regional security and humanitarian interests.

As part of the short-term capacity building program, Fiji has extended an invitation to
PNG to nominate four (4) PNGDF officers to participate at a UN-sanctioned training
course to be conducted at the Black Rock UN School in October 2024.

The Fijian armed forces accorded Dr. Billy a quarter guard parade along with a
traditional welcome ceremony upon his arrival at the Black Rock Camp and given a
tour of the facility.

The Minister thanked the Government and people of Fiji for the warm reception and hospitality accorded to him on completion of his one-day visit.