Solomons mission worsens child sex

Dan Box
The Australian 22 March 2006

SOLDIERS, police and technical advisers sent from countries including
Australia to rebuild the war-torn Solomon Islands have fuelled a huge
increase in the country's child sex industry.

A series of harrowing interviews, documented in an unpublished UN report and
revealed in this week's Time magazine, detail how years of civil conflict
and poverty forced many Solomon's children to sell themselves for sex.

One church group in a remote area of the islands described how a local
family had been paid $US10,000 ($13,800) for their adopted daughter by a
foreign contractor working for the Regional Assistance Mission to the
Solomon Islands.

"The girl had been forced to leave school in the middle of Form 4," the
report said.

"There appears to be a considerable risk that the girl would be abandoned
when the purchaser moves on, as respondents believed he has done before."

Other Solomon Islanders said the influx of army, police and civilian workers
had contributed to an increase in prostitution among girls under 18.

"Other regular clients of prostitutes were said to include tourists,
expatriate workers, aid workers, timber workers and fishers," the report
said.

The report, commissioned by the UN Children's Fund, was completed in October
2004 but has never been publicly released.

UNICEF spokeswoman Shantha Bloeman said the document was due to be released
this year as part of a combined study on the commercial sexual exploitation
of children in five Pacific countries.

"UNICEF has been working with governments to develop national plans of
actions to put in place legislation, policies and enforcement mechanisms to
prevent child sexual exploitation and assist the potential victims," she
said.

Other examples of child sexual exploitation detailed in the report include
school girls who sold themselves to a taxi driver because they could not
afford to travel to school and families who sold their daughters to foreign
fishermen for fish.

The report suggests much of the Solomons' sex industry is driven by the
poverty that followed a civil conflict between 1999 and 2003, known as the
Troubles, which displaced about 35,000 people.

The Islands Government subsequently invited the combined RAMSI force, which
includes about 250 police officers, 120 civilians and a contingent of
military personnel from 11 Pacific countries, including Australia and New
Zealand, to help restore peace.

The Australian Government had allocated $840.6 million to RAMSI over four
years from 2005-06 at the time of the report's writing.

The force was due to stay until 2013.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed that one member of the
Australian Defence Force serving in the Solomons had been found guilty of an
indecent act and subsequently suspended.


Submitted Via Email R.T, Oxfam Int'l.