A Compact of Free Association (COFA) defines the relationship that each of three sovereign states—the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the Republic of Palau—have entered into as associated states with the United States.
Now sovereign nations, the three freely associated states were formerly part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations trusteeship administered by the United States Navy from 1947 to 1951 and by the United States Department of the Interior from 1951 to 1986 (to 1994 for Palau). Under the COFA relationship, the United States provides guaranteed financial assistance over a 15-year period administered through the Office of Insular Affairs in exchange for full international defense authority and responsibilities.
Read more about Compact Of Free Association: Economic Provisions, Military Provisions, 2003 Renewal, Concerns Over U.S. Fulfillment of Commitments To The Compact Area Prior To and Following The Compact, Health Care Issues For COFA Citizens Within The United States
Famous quotes containing the words compact, free and/or association:
“The powers of the federal government ... result from the compact to which the states are parties, [and are] limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)