Nauru is a parliamentary republic, and the parliament chooses the president and vice president from among its members.

Following parliamentary elections in September 2022, which were independently monitored by the Pacific Islands Forum, the legislature elected Russ Kun to serve as president. Kun, an independent who previously served as a deputy minister under former president Lionel Aingimea, ran unopposed. Former president Aingimea kept his seat and was appointed deputy parliamentary speaker by Kun.

The 19-member unicameral Parliament is popularly elected from eight constituencies for three-year terms.

Parliamentary elections were held in September 2022, the first polls since the COVID-19 pandemic, and strict public health rules were introduced to mitigate the virus’s spread. The election saw 17 incumbent lawmakers retain their seats; 2 opposition parliamentarians, Milton Dube and Tawaki Lyn-Wannan Kam, were ousted from their seats, and their replacements formed part of the new government. The elections were observed by a delegation from the Pacific Islands Forum that deemed the competition free and fair. However, the Pacific Freedom Forum criticized the inability to access free and full news media.

The electoral laws are generally fair and implemented impartially. The Nauru Electoral Commission is responsible for managing the entire election process. Voting is compulsory.

Although political parties are permitted, most candidates run as independents. Members of the Nauru 19 activist group have faced prosecution, though official interference into their lives reportedly eased in 2019.

Intense political rivalries created political instability prior to 2013. However, former president Waqa served two full terms before losing his seat as a representative, and his successor, Lionel Aingimea, served one full term before being replaced by President Kun in 2022. Seventeen of the 19 parliamentary seats were retained by incumbents in the 2022 polls.

People’s political choices are generally free from domination by powerful interests that are not democratically accountable. In 2019, a former representative alleged that bribery was rife in the electoral process, claiming that candidates routinely buy motorcycles and kitchenware for constituents.

The constitution provides for universal suffrage. However, widely held biases regarding the role of women in society have discouraged women’s participation in politics and elections; just two women won seats in Parliament in 2022, both of whom were incumbents. Including those two representatives, only three women have been elected in Nauru’s modern history.

The freely elected parliament, led by the speaker, sets, and makes policy. However, the Australian government has had considerable influence over politics due to the processing center for asylum seekers they base on Nauru. Australian authorities have detained many refugees on the island indefinitely, a significant source of income for Nauru’s government. In September 2021, the Nauruan government signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Australia to indefinitely maintain operations of the immigration detention center on the island. The new Australian government elected in 2022 pledged to keep the center open; revenue generated by the center (AUD $135 million, or US$93 million) constituted more than half of Nauru’s anticipated revenue in its 2022–23 budget.

In February 2021, Nauru announced its intentions to leave the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), which maintained significant influence over government policy and processes, after tensions grew over the appointment of a new general secretary. Nauru agreed to temporarily rescind their withdrawal in June 2022 contingent on guarantees that the PIF’s general secretariat be rotated between its Micronesian, Polynesian, and Melanesian regional blocs.

Corruption remains a problem. Allegations of improper payments to senior government officials, including former President Waqa, by an Australian phosphate company emerged in 2016. In June 2021, reports emerged that in February 2020, Australian authorities had officially charged the company at the center of the allegations with conspiracy to bribe foreign public officials in Nauru; proceedings continued throughout 2022, with additional charges laid.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported in 2018 that many family members of Nauruan politicians owned shares of the land where the Australian-run processing center is situated; they disproportionately benefit from their ability to collect high rents or secure high-paying jobs or other contracts at the center.

Nauru lacks a law on access to public information, but the Government Information Office releases some budget figures. Government officials are not required to disclose financial information. Nauru Police Force emails leaked by anonymous hackers in May 2022 revealed that while in office, former president Lionel Aingimea had directed the commissioner of police to ignore requests for comment from an Australian journalist regarding allegations that a refugee had been attacked in Nauru.

Freedom of expression is constitutionally guaranteed but not always respected in practice. Foreign journalists have a particularly difficult time operating in Nauru, as the government has implemented restrictions, including a several-thousand dollar (AUS) visa application fee, that appear to be aimed at deterring outside coverage of conditions for asylum seekers and refugees.

The 2016 Crimes Act introduced criminal charges for defamation, now punishable with up to three years in prison. Similarly, the Administration of Justice Act, a contempt-of-court law passed in 2018, serves as a deterrent for journalists to publish pieces critical of the government and the judiciary.

The constitution provides for freedom of religion, which the government generally respects in practice.

Academic freedom is generally respected. Reports emerged in 2020 that the University of the South Pacific, a regional university with campuses located in various countries including Nauru, was plagued by allegations of corruption. In February 2021, the university’s vice-chancellor and president, Pal Ahluwalia, was removed from his post and deported from Fiji, the site of the university’s headquarters, after reporting on financial mismanagement at the university. After accepting a temporary post at the Nauru campus of the university at Aingimea’s invitation that same month, Ahluwalia was ultimately reinstated by the university’s council in August 2021.

Authorities are not known to illegally monitor private online communications. In 2020, President Aingimea presented the National Disaster Risk Management (Amendment) Bill 2020, which outlawed publishing or posting messages on social or mass media intended to cause fear, mislead the public, or distort official information, with severe punishments. The law also expanded police powers to act in a national disaster without a warrant. How the new law will be applied and what level of oversight will be exercised was unclear at the end of 2022.

The Guardian reported in August 2022 that the Australian government engaged private security contractors to conduct surveillance on asylum seekers detained in Nauru, in particular those thought to be linked to Australian media, lawyers, and advocates. The intelligence reports prepared by security contractors were circulated among various Nauruan and Australian government entities, including the Australian Border Force and the Australian Federal Police. Some former detainees have speculated that they were singled out and poorly treated because they were subjects of surveillance.

The constitution upholds the right to assemble peacefully, but this right has not always been respected in practice. Demonstrations related to the treatment of asylum seekers housed at the Australian processing center are often repressed. Members of the Nauru 19 group, who were arrested for their 2015 antigovernment protests, were sentenced to jail time in 2019.

The government continued to impose COVID-19 public health restrictions on gatherings to curb the virus’s spread after its first outbreak in June 2022, though many restrictions eased in August.

There are no legal restrictions on the formation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Nauru. There are several advocacy groups for women, as well as development-focused and religious organizations. However, authorities have interfered with the operations of activists seeking to improve the treatment of asylum seekers.

In 2020, the Nauruan parliament passed the Registration of Associations Act, which provides official recognition of domestic and foreign NGOs, including provisions allowing registered associations to own property and sue or be sued. Eligible organizations are required to register prior to commencing their operations, and the Registrar must provide reasons for decisions such as refusing or canceling registration.

There are no formal trade unions and only limited labor protection laws, partly because there is little large-scale private employment. The rights to strike and to collectively bargain are not protected by law. Trade unions were expressly excluded from the Registration of Associations Act of 2020, meaning they do not enjoy the benefits provided by the Act, including property rights.

There have been concerns about undue influence on the judiciary from government officials, who have been accused of dismissing judges for unfavorable rulings. Many are concerned that government officials have pressured the judiciary in connection with the Nauru 19 case.

The Supreme Court is the highest authority on constitutional issues in Nauru. Appeals had previously been heard in the high court of Australia, but in 2018, the country began severing links with Australia’s justice system, ostensibly to reduce costs and to establish greater independence. However, some skeptics viewed the development as a means of denying members of the Nauru 19 activist group an avenue to appeal their cases: Australian Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Muecke claimed the government pressured the sentencing magistrate to issue the group maximum sentences and terminated his contract after he granted the court proceedings a permanent stay in 2018. The group’s members were ultimately convicted and sentenced to jail time in 2019.

Nauru later signed memoranda with neighboring Pacific countries, including Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, to provide justices for Nauru’s new Court of Appeals.

The Nauruan government has been accused of interfering with the judicial process and undermining the rule of law. The 2018 contempt-of-court law outlaws criticism of witnesses, judicial officers, or legal representatives in a pending court matter, as well as undermining judicial officials or the authority of courts. Violations of the law, which contains exemptions for government officials deemed to be acting in good faith or the interests of national security, are punishable by fines of up to AU$20,000 (US$13,800) for individuals and AU$50,000 (US$34,500) for corporations.

Though the constitution provides for due process rights, the resumption of legal proceedings against members of the Nauru 19 as well as changes to the appellate jurisdiction indicate that due process is not always respected in practice.

Public servants who testify in favor of the government are distinguished legally from those testifying against it. Analysts said it appeared that those who miss work to testify against the government would be placed on leave without pay, and that the law appeared to represent an attempt to discourage civil servants from testifying in favor of the Nauru 19.

The permanent stay of the Nauru 19 case granted by Justice Muecke was overturned in 2019, and the members were sentenced to jail time.

Civilian authorities control the small police force. Nauru has no armed forces; Australia provides defense assistance under an informal agreement.

The Australian processing center for asylum seekers has received considerable international criticism for poor treatment of asylum seekers housed there. Few arrests have been made in connection with alleged abuses of its residents.

The constitution provides for equal treatment regardless of race, country of origin, ethnicity, politics, or gender, but those rights are not always protected in practice. There are few legal protections against discrimination, which is notably a problem for women in the workplace. Same-sex sexual relations were decriminalized in 2016.

Several reports have detailed widespread abuse of refugees and asylum seekers forcibly transferred to Nauru under its agreement with Australia. Crimes committed against asylum seekers outside the processing center, where most refugees are housed, frequently go uninvestigated. The asylum seekers suffer from grossly inadequate housing; denial of health care for life-threatening conditions; and a high rate of self-harm attempts among residents, including children detainees—who wait, at times, for years for their asylum applications to be processed. The last children were evacuated from Nauru and resettled in the United States in 2019. Reports from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that year found that refugees had been exposed to asbestos for prolonged periods. In 2019, the Nauruan government denied the medical evacuation of over 20 individuals, all of whom had been vouched for by Australian doctors.

Outbreaks of COVID-19 in June 2022 in Nauru resulted in the deterioration of conditions for asylum seekers detained on the island, with detainees facing confinement without adequate food and supplies. Calls by human rights groups to evacuate the detainees from Nauru were ignored.

In 2020, the United States agreed to resettle over 1,100 asylum seekers who were in the Nauru and Papua New Guinea processing centers by early 2021. As of August 2021, 398 asylum seekers had been resettled from Nauru to the United States. As of October 2022, 111 asylum seekers transferred to Nauru from Australia remained in the country. In October 2022, the Australian government hired Management and Training Corporation (MTC), a US-based prison operator with a history of negligence and security failures, to oversee the Nauru processing center.

In May 2022, a group of anonymous hackers leaked over 200,000 internal emails from the Nauru Police Force documenting the ill-treatment and abuse of asylum seekers detained on the island. The emails referenced attempts to self-harm among the detainees and appeared to show the president of Nauru directing the police commissioner to ignore media requests for comment about attacks on refugees in Nauru.

Most people in Nauru are free to move around the island. However, while asylum seekers were granted freedom of movement across the island in 2015, there are limits on their ability to leave, and they face significant difficulties in obtaining employment and education. Many asylum seekers had lived in tents and converted storage containers at the processing center, where they were under heavy surveillance. In 2018, the aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) was asked by Nauru officials to stop providing care for asylum seekers, and the group subsequently left the country. In the days afterward, MSF condemned conditions for the asylum seekers and refugees in Nauru and claimed they had been forced out.

The government has withheld the passports of some political opponents in recent years, including at least three people associated with the Nauru 19, among them two former opposition lawmakers. These two opposition lawmakers blame the government for the death of former president and Nauru 19 member Sprent Dabwido. Legal action, filed in 2019 by the two former lawmakers, claims that the Nauruan government delayed returning Dabwido his passport, preventing him from receiving treatment for cancer in Australia in time to be cured.

To prevent the introduction of COVID-19 into the country, Nauruan stopped most international flights landing in Nauru in 2020 and imposed quarantine requirements for most international arrivals, except for those arriving from a regularly updated list of “safe countries” deemed to have sufficiently low levels of COVID-19 in their respective populations. Other movement restrictions, including curfews, were enforced with strict punishments. In June 2022, amid the country’s first outbreak of the virus, arriving flights from abroad were banned. These restrictions eased in August, although other restrictions (including mandatory mask wearing) remained.

The constitution protects the right to own property and people in Nauru freely establish businesses. However, as of 2014, foreigners must pay approximately AU$6,000 ($4,100) a year for a business visa, up from AU$400 ($280).

In his ruling on the Nauru 19 case, Judge Muecke said that the government of Nauru maintained an unwritten blacklist under which the Nauru 19 were denied employment and the right to conduct business on the island.

Domestic violence, which mostly affects women, remains a serious problem, and children are also vulnerable to violence despite official efforts to address these problems. In 2020, the government simplified the process for victims of domestic violence to obtain safety and protection orders against their abusers. The government of Nauru also announced then that it would introduce harsher laws for sex offenders, including by reducing the ability of sex offenders to receive bail and introducing laws that prevent the age of the perpetrator a mitigating factor in sex offences. Marital rape is a criminal offense.

Same-sex marriage is not recognized by law. Abortion is only allowed when the mother’s life is in danger, but not in cases of rape, which was a point of controversy after an asylum seeker was raped in in 2016 in the Australian processing center.

With the exception of asylum seekers, individuals generally enjoy equal economic opportunities. However, economic opportunities are limited to sectors such as phosphate mining and the public sector.

There are no health and safety laws to protect workers outside the public sector, and issues relating to dust exposure for phosphate miners are of serious concern. According to the US State Department, there have been no reports of human trafficking in Nauru in recent years.