Nine atolls. Ten square miles of usually dry land. Twelve thousand people. That’s about all there is to Tuvalu. One of the smallest independent countries in the world in both land area and population, it’s hard to understand why or how such a place could become independent. There is hardly any development...which is not necessarily bad, as much of its population lives a traditional, subsistence lifestyle. Surviving from stamp sales, remittances from Tuvaluans working as merchant sailors, fishing license deals, and proceeds from a trust fund, Tuvalu clings to its independence. Its current biggest fear? Losing land area to rising sea levels due to global warming. There is just nowhere for them to go.

Location:  Tuvalu is located in the central Pacific, south of the Gilbert Islands, east of the Solomon Islands, and north of Fiji.  The group consists of nine flat atolls comprising a total of 26 square kilometers of dry land.  The name Tuvalu means “eight standing together,” so named because of the eight traditionally inhabited atolls.

The islands were settled as long as 2,000 years ago by Polynesians who probably arrived from Samoa.  The Tuvaluan language is close to Samoan.  Subsequent migrations or raids from Tonga and Kiribati added to the population mix, although it remained predominantly Polynesian.  In the 1800s the group was given the name “Ellice” islands by a ship captain honoring a financial benefactor of the voyage.  Eventually many European and American beachcombers, often deserters from whalers, settled in, marrying local women and adding new genes to the pool.  Many became traders.  In the 1860s Peruvian blackbirders carried off 400 Tuvaluans to work digging guano on Peruvian coastal islands.  None ever returned.  Also in the 1860s, missionaries arrived and the islanders began to convert to Christianity.  In the 1890s the British made a protectorate of Tuvalu, joining it with the Gilbert Islands to the north.  In 1916 it became the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.

Tuvalu has a government published newspaper called Tuvalu Echoes, published in both English and Tuvaluan.  It has no web site.  

During World War II there were no battles in Tuvalu, but Americans built bases on three of the atolls.  In 1979 the United States and Tuvalu signed a treaty of friendship, in which the United States dropped its claims to four of the group’s islands.

There is no U.S. embassy or consulate in Tuvalu, and the U.S. Ambassador to Fiji serves as the U.S. Ambassador to Tuvalu.  He visits Tuvalu occasionally.

In 2008 the United States imported a total of $88,000 worth of goods from Tuvalu.  Also in 2008, the United States exported a total of $130,000 worth of goods to Tuvalu, most of that in generators and accessories, electric apparatus, and apparel and other textile goods.  There are no U.S. aid programs currently in Tuvalu.

The main controversy with the United States deals with the U.S. refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.  In 2002 the Tuvaluan prime minister threatened to sue the United States in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, but he lost the next election and no suit was filed.

U.S. ambassadors to Fiji have been accredited to Tuvalu since 1997.

Simati, Aurese Makoi

To many people, the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu (pop.: 12,177) is best known for the fact that it won the coveted Internet country domain extension .tv. The nation sent a new ambassador to the U.S. late last year who is concurrently accredited as his country's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, partly because Tuvalu does not own an embassy in Washington, D.C. Aunese Makoi Simati presented his credentials to President Barack Obama on January 14, 2013, just a month after doing the same with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Simati succeeds Afelee F. Pita, who had served in the U.S. since December 2006.

Born on April 22, 1967, Simati earned an undergraduate degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Economics and Geography at Waikato University in New Zealand.

Simati joined government service in 1991, spending his first thirteen years at the Tuvalu Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Industries, starting as a rural physical planner in the Department of Planning and rising to senior economic adviser from 1993 to 1994, acting director from 1994 to 1999, and senior assistant secretary from 1999 to 2003.

Simati spent the next seven years serving in high positions in three different ministries. From 2003 to 2004, he was acting permanent secretary in the Ministry of Communications and Transport; in 2005, he served as permanent secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Rural Development; and from 2006 to 2009, he was permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Industries.

From mid-2009 to January 2010, Simati served as permanent secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Office of Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia in Funafuti. From February 2010 until his latest appointment, Simati was high commissioner (i.e., ambassador) to Fiji. 

Ambassador Simati is married to Sunema P. Simati.

Official Biography

A Window for Development: Tuvalu Trust Fund (by Aunese Makoi Simati)

Tuvalu’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations