Child Soldiers Global Report 2008 - Solomon Islands

Population: 478,000 (227,000 under 18)
Government Armed Forces: no armed forces
Compulsary Recruitment Age: not applicable
Voluntary Recruitment Age: not applicable
Voting Age: 18
Optional Protocol: not signed
Other Treaties: GC AP I, GC AP II, CRC

There were no armed forces. The minimum recruitment age to the police force was 18. Former child soldiers were left out of reintegration programmes aimed at ex-combatants.

Context:

Following five years of internal armed conflict and the intervention in 2003 of the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission for the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), also known as Operation "Helpem Fren" (Helping a Friend), progress continued on the reconstruction of infrastructure and key institutions affected by the armed conflict. There were concerns, however, that the root causes of the conflict remained, as more than 80 per cent of the population were still dependent on subsistence agriculture and fishing and had limited access to health and education services. The marked disparity in development between the capital, Honiara, and the provinces, and the reported corruption among political leaders continued to present significant challenges to development.¹

In 2005 the High Court convicted at least ten people for their role in the conflict, including Harold Keke, former leader of the Guadalcanal Liberation Front, sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2002 murder of Augustine Geve, a former priest and government minister.² It appeared that no investigations had taken place into recruitment of children by militias and other cases of alleged war crimes affecting children during the conflict, as recommended by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2003.³

Government:

National recruitment legislation and practice

There were no armed forces. According to the Police Act, "no person shall be enlisted in the Force unless ... he is of or above the age of eighteen years and under the age of twenty-eight years".⁴ No law had been enacted to protect children from their involvement in armed conflict.

As part of proposed reforms, all students would be required after Form 5 (age 17) "to undertake National Service through government-driven programs".⁵ It was not clear what activities this service would entail and no further information was available.

Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR):

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) helped to demobilize over 1,000 police special constables between July 2002 and July 2004, most of them recruited from former armed groups.⁶ The reintegration packages offered technical assistance, monitoring and guidance for projects with a maximum duration of six months.⁷

While it was recognized that different measures were needed for women and children involved in the armed conflict,⁸ in reality children did not benefit from the UNDP program, and concerns remained for hundreds of former child soldiers, for whom few provisions had been made.⁹

1 Amnesty International (AI), Amnesty International Report 2005 and 2006.

2 AI, Amnesty International Report 2006.

3 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Consideration of report submitted by Solomon Islands, Concluding observations, UN Doc. CRC/C/15/Add.208, 2 July 2003.

4 Solomon Islands, Police Act, Police Regulations, section 72(2).

5 Solomon Islands, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, "Government Policy Framework", May 2006, www.pmc.gov.sb/; UNESCO, Institute for Statistics, Global Education Digest 2006: Comparing Education Statistics across the World, Montreal 2006, unesdoc.unesco.org.

6 UN DDR Resource Centre, Country Programme: Solomon Islands, www.unddr.org.

7 UNDP, "Support to the Reintegration of Special Constable in Solomon Islands", project brief, 2006, www.unddr.org.

8 Country Programme: Solomon Islands, above note 6.

9 UNICEF EAPRO, Emergencies: Refugees, IDPs and Child Soldiers, Natural Disasters, 2005.