Compact of Free Association

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The Compacts of Free Association (COFA) are international agreements establishing and governing the relationships of free association between the United States and the three Pacific Island sovereign states: Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and the Republic of Palau. As a result, these countries are sometimes known as the Freely Associated States (FASs). All three agreements next expire in 2043. These countries, together with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, formerly constituted the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations trusteeship administered by the United States Navy from 1947 to 1951, and by the U.S. Department of the Interior from 1951 to 1986 (to 1994 for Palau). The compacts came into being as an extension of the US–UN territorial trusteeship agreement, which obliged the federal government of the United States "to promote the development of the people of the Trust Territory toward self-government...

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