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Solomon Islands: Unity in Diversity — The End of a Dream?

  • Chapter
Australia’s Arc of Instability

Part of the book series: The GeoJournal Library ((GEJL,volume 82))

10.11 Conclusion

The RAMSI has successfully restored law and order in a very short time, its military component being drastically reduced as the police and judiciary have assumed control. The longer-term challenge, however, was never one of simply disbanding militants, rogue elements, and armed gangs in Honiara, Guadalcanal, and elsewhere. The real challenge lies in helping resolve the far more entrenched dissent regarding the sovereignty of the unified state and national development on the one hand, and provincial interests based on ethnic divisions on the other. It requires an accurate analysis of the schism between state and society. It necessitates an understanding of the underlying fundamental issue of land, and of the clash between traditional values and customary ownership rights as against the imported notion of land as a commodity. One serious implication for the restoration of law and order is that since Malaitans may soon be able to re-assert their rights to land they have acquired — legally — outside their home province and tribal areas, this could enflame the whole situation all over again. Yet to go down the path of different ethnic rights as against general legal (and human) rights is contrary to the idea of a unified state in the Westphalian model where separatism is viewed as a recipe for state dismemberment. While one may argue about Australia’s principal motives for intervening in Solomon Islands, it must be said that it has not only proved useful in helping rebuild its shattered economy and dysfunctional polity, but also it has been essential in breaking the pattern of hostility, and ever-ending, ever-widening, cycle of Melanesian payback violence. In helping the Solomon Islands haul itself back from the brink of failed state status, and to overcome real and actual corruption, it is essential that Australia develops a more sophisticated range of culturally embedded policies than it appears to have formulated and used in recent years, for though RAMSI may be able to help Solomon Islanders create a quasi-functioning state in the short term, it does not offer an answer to the profound internal issues which have surfaced and must be confronted if long term peace is to be achieved.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tourism Program, University of Tasmania, Australia

    Dr. Trevor H. B. Sofield (Foundation Professor)

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  1. Dr. Trevor H. B. Sofield
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

    Dennis Rumley

  2. University of Western Australia and Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia

    Vivian Louis Forbes

  3. Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

    Christopher Griffin

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Sofield, T.H.B. (2006). Solomon Islands: Unity in Diversity — The End of a Dream?. In: Rumley, D., Forbes, V.L., Griffin, C. (eds) Australia’s Arc of Instability. The GeoJournal Library, vol 82. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3826-7_11

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