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French Polynesia
Tahiti and 117 other islands, a French collectivity on the UN decolonization list
French Polynesia scatters 118 islands and atolls across a stretch of the South Pacific roughly the size of Western Europe, yet together they hold less land than the US state of Delaware. Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora give it a global reputation for lagoons and overwater bungalows, but its political profile is more complicated. It is an overseas collectivity of France with its own president, assembly, and flag, it uses the CFP franc rather than the euro, and since 2013 it has been on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, a listing France opposed. For three decades it was also the site of France's nuclear weapons tests, a legacy that still shapes relations between Papeete and Paris.
The islands fall into five archipelagos: the Society Islands, home to Tahiti and the capital, Papeete, the low coral atolls of the Tuamotus, the Gambier Islands, the Austral Islands, and the rugged high Marquesas, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024. Mont Orohena on Tahiti reaches 2,241 meters. The statistics institute put the population at about 279,500 in 2025, nearly 70 percent of it on Tahiti. Under a 2004 autonomy statute the territorial government controls most domestic policy, including taxation, education, health, and tourism, while France, represented by a high commissioner, keeps defense, public order, justice, currency, and much of foreign policy. French and Tahitian are the main languages, and tourism, black pearls, and French public spending sustain the economy.
Polynesian voyagers settled the islands more than a thousand years ago, and the marae of Taputapuātea on Raiatea, a UNESCO site since 2017, was a ceremonial center of that seafaring world. France declared a protectorate over Tahiti in 1842 and annexed it in 1880. Between 1966 and 1996 France carried out 193 nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, first in the atmosphere and later underground, and compensation for health effects remains contested. Politics divides between autonomists who favor staying within France and the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira of President Moetai Brotherson, in office since 2023. In October 2026 Brotherson asked the UN decolonization committee to help open a dialogue with France toward a self-determination referendum, while France maintains that the territory already has broad autonomy and that its status is a matter for direct talks.