New Caledonia records a 50% circumcision rate (Morris et al. 2016), plausibly reflecting a genuinely mixed population of indigenous Kanak, European settlers, and other Pacific Islander and Asian communities — though this research could not confirm a specific circumcision tradition for any single community within that mix. New Caledonia's more unusual distinction is a genuine data gap: unlike nearly every other territory in this entire research programme, no official HIV prevalence percentage has ever been published for it, French national health-surveillance methodology, designed for metropolitan France and its main overseas departments, does not extend a calculated rate to this particular Pacific collectivity, leaving only a raw, uncalculated case count on the public record.
New Caledonia records a 50% male circumcision rate (Morris et al. 2016, PMC4772313), a figure internally consistent with neighbouring Pacific entries in the same dataset — Fiji sits at 55%, while Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, discussed elsewhere in this same research batch, sit at a modeled 95%. New Caledonia's rate plausibly reflects its genuinely mixed population: indigenous Kanak people make up roughly 40%, European and French settlers around 24%, and the remainder is composed of various other Pacific Islander and Asian communities, including Wallisian and Futunan settlers from the neighbouring French territory of Wallis and Futuna, along with Tahitian, Vietnamese, and Indonesian communities. This research specifically sought, but could not verify, a documented Kanak traditional circumcision or initiation rite, nor a specific Wallisian or Futunan circumcision tradition — both honest, unresolved gaps rather than assumptions in either direction.
This research did not locate a French national statute or a New Caledonia-specific customary-law provision addressing non-therapeutic male circumcision, despite France being the sovereign power in this overseas territory, nor any verified New Caledonia-specific circumcision harm case.
New Caledonia's more unusual distinction in this research programme is a genuine and rare data gap: no official HIV adult-prevalence percentage has ever been published for it, from any source. UNAIDS and the World Bank's standard modeled-estimate indicator has no data at all for New Caledonia across any year, and French national health-surveillance methodology — the calculations Santé publique France applies to metropolitan France and its main overseas departments — is not extended to New Caledonia, which holds a different statistical status as an overseas collectivity rather than a department. What exists instead is only a raw case count: approximately 309 people living with HIV as of a 2025 report, up from 291 in 2023 and 260 in 2003, with roughly ten new diagnoses each year. This research deliberately declined to calculate its own percentage from that raw count, since no current, official population denominator or methodology exists to support one reliably — a genuine honest gap, following the same principle already applied to Western Sahara and Turkmenistan elsewhere in this research programme, rather than a fabricated number.
New Caledonia is not a WHO Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) priority territory; all 15 WHO VMMC priority countries are in Eastern and Southern Africa.
