ABSTRACT
French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna are still French overseas territories. In New Caledonia, unrest has sometimes taken violent forms among the Kanaks (Melanesians), who now form only 43% of its population (37% are Europeans, many of them connected with the island’s role as a major producer of nickel). In the 1980s changes of government in France produced several changes in the constitutional arrangements proposed for New Caledonia. In French Polynesia there were protests about France’s use of Mururoa atoll for nuclear tests (4); but in 1996 France promised to hold no more tests, and signed the relevant protocols to the 1985 Rarotonga treaty.
