Opinion: Australia must reimagine its peacekeeping role in the Solomons

Kastom, the often-unspoken set of norms that bind the society of Malaita, the most populous province of the Solomon Islands. With a diverse set of local languages, tradition, and tensions amongst the largely Indigenous population, Kastom has a force for social cohesion not to be underestimated by external powers.  Because of Kastom, we have little foresight of local level plans in the wake of the failed no confidence motion against PM Manasseh Sogavare. According to Kastom, to speak of plans, is to unravel them.

In the early hours of Monday morning, Malaita Premier Suidani made an urgent request to the president of the UN Security Council.  The urgent request calls for assistance to assess the implementation of the Townsville Peace Agreement of 2000. The premier alleges government failure to meet the measures set out in Part Four of the Agreement, focused on political and socio-economic issues necessary for ensuring sustainable peace in the island group. 

Additionally, the communique explains that current law and order interventions of International Peacekeepers, like prior ones, have suffered from omission and narrow focus and are therefore complicit ‘in retarding local efforts to progress issues which form the underlying root cause of conflict’.  

The premiers urgently requests:

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‘That there be an urgent dispatch of a team to consult with all relevant stakeholders in Solomon Islands and particularly those “countries in the region” to objectively assess the implementation of the Agreement with special attention to Part Four being Political and Socio-economic Issues, identifying causes of non-implementation of agreed measures and recommending measures to ensure implementation.

That the team report back to the UN Security Council on analysis and recommendations for implementation of the Agreement so as to address fundamental social and economic issues to ensure peace and stability in Solomon Islands.’

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By stating that the Solomon Islands face the imminent re-ignition of internal conflict in the absence of meaningful progress on agreed measures within Part Four of the Townsville Peace Agreement, Suidani has fired a warning shot to the international community.  It’s a warning that appears to lay the ground of legitimising unspoken plans in the wake of yesterday’s failed no confidence motion.

Australia will watch events unfold, whilst committing to the role of peacekeeper.  But the time has come to take a broader view of supportive action.  Australia should meet the call of Premier Suidani, with a task-force of expertise in international relations with deep exposure to Indigenous customary law and rights. To understand the Solomons means to understand the nuances of complex Indigenous history and culture, the impacts of occupation, transit, and influence by foreign powers.  It needs expertise in Belt and Road and debt management.  It needs expertise in land and resource rights.  It is not our role to propagate a colonial cliché of peacekeeping towards an indigenous population that needs so much else that we might offer.

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