Portal:Tuvalu

Women in Tuvalu continue to maintain a traditional Polynesian culture within a predominantly Christian society. Tuvaluan cultural identity is sustained through an individual's connection to their home island. In the traditional community system in Tuvalu, each family has its own task, or salanga, to perform for the community. The skills of a family are passed on from parents to children. The women of Tuvalu participate in the traditional music of Tuvalu and in the creation of the art of Tuvalu including using cowrie and other shells in traditional handicrafts. There are opportunities of further education and paid employment with non-government organisations (NGOs) and government enterprises, education and health agencies being the primary opportunities for Tuvaluan women.

The number of women holding positions of Assistant Secretaries in government departments has increased from 20% in 2012 to nearly 50% in 2014. Also at the nine Island Kaupule (Local Councils) the representation of women has increased from 1 in 2012 to 3 in 2014. (Full article...)

Funafuti International Airport (IATA: FUN, ICAO: NGFU) is an airport in Vaiaku on Funafuti, an atoll that serves as the capital of the island nation of Tuvalu. It is the sole international airport in Tuvalu. Fiji Airways operates between Suva, Nadi and Funafuti. (Full article...)

Tuvalu is a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia, with a total population, recorded in the census of 12 December 2022, was 10,643. The economy of Tuvalu is constrained by its remoteness and lack of economies of scale. Government revenues largely come from fishing licences (primarily paid under the South Pacific Tuna Treaty); direct grants from international donors (government donors as well as from the Asian Development Bank); and income from the Tuvalu Trust Fund. The lease of its highly fortuitous .tv Top Level Domain (TLD) also contributes revenue. The sale of stamps since the independence of Tuvalu in 1976 has been an important source of revenue for the country and government. However, such revenue has significantly declined in recent years. Tuvalu has hardly any tourism. It has no tour guides, tour operators, or organised activities, and no cruise ships visit.

The Tuvalu Trust Fund was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand to help supplement national deficits, underpin economic development, and help the nation achieve greater financial autonomy. The Fund has contributed roughly A$79 million, 15% of the annual government budget each year since 1990. With a capital value of about 2.5 times GDP, the Trust Fund provides an important cushion for Tuvalu's volatile income sources from fishing and royalties from the sale of the .tv domain. (Full article...)

Motufoua Secondary School is a boarding school for children on Vaitupu atoll, Tuvalu. As of 2000 it is the largest high school in Tuvalu. As Tuvalu consists of nine islands, the students reside on Vaitupu during the school year and return to their home islands during the school vacations.

The school received worldwide attention in March 2000, when a fire in a dormitory at the school killed 19 girls and an adult supervisor. It was later discovered that the fire was caused by a student using a candle to read during the night. The school celebrated 100 years of education in 2005. (Full article...)

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in Tuvalu face legal difficulties not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents. Sections 153, 154 and 155 of the Penal Code outlaw male homosexual intercourse with a penalty of up to 14 years in prison, but the law is not enforced. Employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been banned since 2017. Since 2023, the Constitution of Tuvalu has banned same-sex marriage.

Tuvalu is home to a traditional transgender population, called the pinapinaaine, or pina, who historically played certain societal and communal roles. (Full article...)

A paopao (from the Samoan language, meaning a small fishing canoe made from a single log), is the name used by the Polynesian-speaking inhabitants of the Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu) for their single-outrigger canoes, of which the largest could carry four to six adults. The large double-hulled sailing canoes (lualua and foulua) had ceased to be constructed in the Ellice Islands some time before contact with Europeans.

Donald Gilbert Kennedy, the resident District Officer in the administration of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony from 1932 to 1938, described the construction of paopao and of the variations of single-outrigger canoes that had been developed on Vaitupu and Nanumea. Gerd Koch, an anthropologist, visited the atolls of Nanumaga, Nukufetau and Niutao, in 1960–61, and published a book on the material culture of the Ellice Islands, which also described the canoes of those islands. (Full article...)

Willy Telavi (born 28 January 1954) is a Tuvaluan politician who served as Prime Minister of Tuvalu from 2010 to 2013.

Born in Nanumea, Telavi was first elected to parliament in 2006 and was re-elected in 2010. He became prime minister on 24 December 2010 and the Telavi Ministry retained government until August 2013. The refusal of prime minister Telavi to recall the Parliament of Tuvalu after the 2013 Nukufetau by-election resulted in a constitutional crisis when he adopted the position that, under the Constitution of Tuvalu, he was only required to convene parliament once a year, and was thus under no obligation to summon it until December 2013. The opposition then requested the Governor-General of Tuvalu, Sir Iakoba Italeli, to intervene against the Telavi's decision. (Full article...)

The Tuvalu Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (TASNOC; IOC Code: TUV) is the Tuvaluan organization recognised as a National Olympic Committee (NOC) by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In 2006, Tuvalu satisfied the IOC's criterion of a minimum five national sports federations recognised by their international sports federations, which included basketball, volleyball, weightlifting, boxing and table tennis.

TASNOC is a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code published by the World Anti-Doping Agency. (Full article...)

Fredrick George Whibley (1855–1919) abandoned a career as clerk in a London bank to escape from the constraints and social expectations of respectability in the Victorian era. He ended up as a copra trader on Niutao in the Ellice Islands in the central Pacific Ocean.

Whibley was born in 1855 in Sittingbourne, Kent, England, the youngest son of Ambrose Whibley, silk mercer, and his first wife, Anne Parkes. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School. (Full article...)

Nanumea is the northwesternmost atoll in the Polynesian nation of Tuvalu, a group of nine coral atolls and islands spread over about 400 miles (640 km) of the Pacific Ocean just south of the equator and west of the International Date Line. Nanumea is 4 km² (1.5 sq mi) with a population of 610 people (2022 census). (Full article...)

The Tuvalu Trust Fund is an international sovereign wealth fund established to benefit Tuvalu, a small, central Pacific island nation, by providing income to cover shortfalls in the national budget, underpin economic development, and help the nation achieve greater financial autonomy. The Tuvalu Trust Fund was established in 1987 by the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2014 Country Report noted the market value of the Tuvalu Trust Fund dropped during the 2008 financial crisis; however, the IMF 2016 Country Report estimates the total value of the fund had recovered to be AUD$131 million in 2012. The policy of the Tuvaluan government has been to grow the maintained value of the Consolidated Investment Fund (CIF), from which the government can draw funds for government expenditure; during 2016-2020 the government was able to save an average of 6.6% of GDP into the CIF. (Full article...)

Gerd Koch (11 July 1922 – 19 April 2005) was a German cultural anthropologist best known for his studies on the material culture of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Santa Cruz Islands in the Pacific. He was associated with the Ethnological Museum of Berlin (German: Ethnologisches Museum; until 1999 Museum für Völkerkunde). His field work was directed to researching and recording the use of artefacts in their indigenous context, to begin to understand these societies.

His work in cultural and social anthropology extended to researching and recording the music and dance of the Pacific Islands. He collaborated with Dieter Christensen, a music-ethnologist, on The Music of the Ellice Islands (German: Die Musik der Ellice-Inseln) (1964) and Koch also published the Songs of Tuvalu (translated by Guy Slatter) (2000). In Tuvalu he was also known as 'Keti'. (Full article...)

The Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau (now trading as Tuvalu Post Limited) is the government body in Tuvalu that issues new stamps and first day covers, which are available for purchase by stamp collectors around the world. The Bureau is located in Funafuti.

The sale of stamps has since the independence of Tuvalu in 1976 has been an important source of revenue for the country and government. However, such revenue has significantly declined in recent years. (Full article...)

Tuvalu consists of nine separate islands: six atolls and three reef islands. An atoll typically consists of several motus: Tuvalu has a total of 124 islands and islets. Each island is surrounded by a coral reef. The soils of Tuvalu's islands are usually shallow, porous, alkaline, coarse-textured, with carbonate mineralogy and high pH values of up to 8.2 to 8.9. The soils are usually deficient in most of the important nutrients needed for plant growth, so garden beds need to be enhanced with mulch to increase their fertility. Tuvalu's small, widely scattered atolls have a total land area of only about 26 square kilometres (10 square miles) making Tuvalu the fourth-smallest country in the world.

The sea level at the Funafuti tide gauge has been rising at a rate of 3.9 mm per year, and it has been determined that rising sea levels are causing more wave energy to be transferred across reef surfaces, which has tended to push more sand onto island shorelines, increasing islands’ land area. Over a recent four-decade period, there was a net increase in the land area of the islets of 2.9% (73.5 ha), although the changes were not uniform: About 74% of them increased in size and about 27% decreased in size. (Full article...)

Tuvalu is a small island nation in the South Pacific, located North of Fiji and North West of Samoa. The population at the 2012 census was 10,837 (2012 Population & Housing Census Preliminary Analytical Report). Tuvalu has a written constitution which includes a statement of rights influenced by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. While most human rights in Tuvalu are respected, areas of concern include women’s rights and freedom of belief, as well as diminishing access to human rights in the face of global warming. The latter has played a major role in the implementation of human rights actions in Tuvalu given its geographical vulnerability and scarce resources. (Full article...)