Call for urgent decisive action

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Participants at the 2025 Pacific Women’s Meeting at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat in Suva last week. Picture: PIFS

There is a growing call for stronger cybersecurity laws across the Pacific.

Tonga’s Minister of Internal Affairs and chairperson of the Fifth Pacific Women Leaders Meeting, Sinaitakala Tu’itahi said the need for urgent and decisive action was clear.

“It is a priority,” she said during the press conference marking the close of the meeting.

“We have to deal with cybersecurity issues in our respective countries.”

Ms Tu’itahi shared that Tonga’s Parliament recently passed a cybersecurity crimes Bill, which was awaiting the King’s assent.

She said the legislation reflected the country’s serious concern over digital threats, particularly the spread of harmful content on social media.

“Once you have something online, your mother, your father, your brother and your sisters, they see it. So they are affected.

“Our values, the taboos between brothers and sisters, mother and father seeing the pictures of their children, what else is there?”

She said social media platforms such as Facebook were enabling the spread of content that directly undermined Pacific cultural values and family structures.

“This is the importance we place on cybersecurity violence and crime.

“It’s the very fabric of our society that’s being brought up like that in Facebook and all the social media.”

Ms Tu’itahi also called for stricter penalties, including financial fines, to discourage online abuse and hold off enders accountable.