Lopeti Senituli

Lopeti Senituli has been a member of the DTP International Advisory Council since 1994. He is a law practitioner from Tonga having been admitted to the bar in March 2023 and is currently the President of the Tonga Law Society. He was Political and Media Adviser (2018-2019) to the late Prime Minister of Tonga, Hon Samuela ‘Akilisi Pohiva, who died in office in September 2019. He also served in the same role to former Prime Minister, Dr. Feleti Vaka’uta Sevele (2006 – 2010) during which major political and constitutional reforms were implemented. He also served as CEO of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tonga from 2012 to 2015.

Lopeti Senituli is also a long-term political activist having served as the founding Executive Director of the Friendly Islands Human Rights and Democracy Movement (2000-2003) and as the Executive Director of Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC), the secretariat of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement (NFIP) from 1987 to 1993 in Auckland, Aotearoa – New Zealand and in Suva, Fiji from 1993 to 2000.

Lopeti Senituli was a member of the World Council of Churches’ “Eminent Persons Team” that conducted hearings in nine major cities in the United States of America in 1992 on the subject of “Racism as a Violation of Human Rights”. He also served as representative of the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) to the Churches Commission on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches (WCC-CCIA) from 1999 until 2006.

He was appointed in a personal capacity as the representative from the Pacific Islands Forum member governments in the Polynesia region to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Specialist Sub-Committee on Regionalism (SSCR) in March 2015 until 2018.