Baron Waqa
President of Nauru and Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General · 1959
Who is Baron Waqa?
Baron Divavesi Waqa was born on 31 December 1959 in the Boe District of Nauru and belongs to the Eamwidamwit tribe. He studied at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji before completing a master's degree at Monash University in Australia, and worked as a teacher before entering politics. He was elected to Nauru's Parliament for the Boe Constituency in 2003 and served twice as Minister of Education. In June 2013 he was elected President of Nauru, defeating former Finance Minister Roland Kun, and went on to serve as President until August 2019, one of the longer presidential tenures in a country known for rapid changes of government. During his presidency Waqa became one of the most visible Pacific voices on the international stage regarding climate change, telling the United Nations General Assembly in 2014 that the world is deeply interconnected and warning successive UN climate conferences, including COP21 in Paris and COP24 in Poland, that industrialized nations must bear responsibility for a crisis threatening the survival of small island states. After leaving the presidency he continued in regional diplomacy, and in June 2024 he was appointed Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, the leading political and economic policy organization for the Pacific region.
Sources: Baron Waqa, national statement to the 69th United Nations General Assembly (25 September 2014) · Baron Waqa, address to the COP21 and COP24 UN Climate Change Conferences (2015, 2018) · Wikipedia: Baron Waqa (biographical summary, retrieved 2026)