Dr Henry Ivarature has worked and travelled extensively in the Pacific Islands for over 28 years doing research and writing about development issues, as well as a public servant. He has worked at the National Research Institute and the at the Department of Prime Minister & NEC; as a regional civil servant with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat in Fiji and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Canberra. Dr Ivarature performed development program work with PNG Sustainable Development Program Limited managing socio-economic development projects for the Western Province and pubic sector leadership training and development at the sub-national level in PNG with Abt Associates.

Dr Ivarature’s areas of research and writing is cross-disciplinary and covers the areas of medical sociology, health, politics and political instability, regionalism, education (the politics of free education in PNG), governance and democracy, particularly elections. He has observed elections in Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands and Nauru and analysed elections in Tonga, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea.

Dr Ivarature’s current areas of research are in understanding political instability, particularly, in the Western Pacific (PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) looking more closely at the executive stability. He has also looked at other Pacific Island countries like Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu as well.

Dr Ivarature has written about cross-border trafficking of firearms through the PNG-Indonesia border and the political economy of drugs (marijuana in PNG), gun control, the infamous Sandline Affairs, criminal deportees in Tonga, and environment and climate change through the Commonwealth Technical Working Group on Small Islands Resilient States (2013-2014).

To read blog articles Dr Ivarature is writing on COVID-19 in the Pacific, please click here.