Japan Coast Guard Study Program to Accept Palau Official, for 1st Participant from Pacific Islands

The Yomiuri Shimbun

20:00 JST, September 11, 2024

The Pacific island nation of Palau is set to dispatch a coast guard official to Japan who will participate in a policy study program run partly by the Japan Coast Guard, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

Palau will be the first nation outside Asia to send an official to the Maritime Safety and Security Policy Program. The program trains future leaders of the coast guards of Southeast Asian and South Asian countries, who learn about maritime-related laws and practical work.

With China increasing its influence in the southern Pacific, the JCG is aiming to collaborate with the United States and Australia in the region, contribute to a stable maritime order and strengthen cooperative ties with island nations. It also plans to continue to encourage more countries to participate in the program.

The program was launched in 2015, aimed mainly at Southeast Asian countries. In recent years, tensions have been rising around the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture and in the South China Sea. Amid this situation, the program has allowed Japan to share the importance of a maritime order based on laws and rules, instead of force, through the training of coast guard members and exchange activities.

Every year, countries screen candidates for the program and hold exams, and the following year, those chosen to participate attend classes at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo and the Japan Coast Guard Academy in Hiroshima from October to September.

Participants gain expertise on international maritime law, as well as rescue and disaster prevention policies, with lectures conducted in English. They receive a master’s degree in policy studies after their thesis is reviewed.

The Palau official who will come to Japan next month is a man in his 30s who belongs to the country’s maritime security authority.

He has studied extensively in Taiwan and fulfilled criteria to participate in the program, including conditions such as having academic ability equal to a university graduate and experience working for a coast guard for at least three years. There are few coast guard officials who can fulfill these criteria in Pacific island nations.

The South Pacific is a key area for sea lanes that carry natural resources and food from Australia to Japan and the United States. To ensure stability in the area, the JCG has since 2019 regularly dispatched support staff to help improve work skills in Palau and other nations, and continued direct support such as training for maritime rescues.

In July this year, coast guard patrol vessels from Japan and Palau conducted a joint drill off Palau.

The JCG believes that, through such joint activities, Palau has gained a deeper understanding of the need to foster future high-ranking coast guard officers through the master’s program.

The JCG intends to continue to encourage other island nations near Palau to participate in the program.