Introduction
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
I would like firstly to thank the Pacific Leadership Foundation for the invitation to speak to you today. Also, congratulations to New Zealand for the great United Nations Security Council outcome just yesterday.
The Emerging Pacific Leadership Dialogue makes a very valuable contribution to policy discussion and leadership development in our region and I am honoured to be invited to address this conference.
At the request of the Pacific Leadership Foundation, I have the great pleasure of speaking to you about the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands, RAMSI for short.
Before taking up my position here in Noumea as Australian Consul-General for the French Pacific – that is, New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna - I was Director of the Solomon Islands Section in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra.
I have also twice served on the ground in our mission in Honiara.
Before I turn to RAMSI, I would like to take a few minutes to reflect on the fundamental importance of security in our region - the Pacific.
For Australia, the recently released Defence Issues Paper, which informs discussion on the next Defence White Paper, to be released next year, confirms the government’s view that “Australia has a significant stake in the security and stability of the Pacific.”
A stable and secure, peaceful and prosperous Pacific is the over-riding interest, not just of Australia, but of all countries in our region.
Stability and peace are fundamental precursors to prosperity.
But slow economic growth and a lack of employment opportunities also serve to undermine security, allowing transnational crime and environmental crime, such as illegal fishing, to flourish.
This is behind the Australian Government’s focus on economic diplomacy as a fundamental pillar of Australia’s foreign policy.
Economic growth and prosperity offers the best pathway towards peace, stability.
And peace and stability is in all of our interests, particularly as we anticipate the important challenges that lie ahead for the region.
The population of the Pacific is expected to increase from 10 to 15 million over the next 20 years, and to double by 2050.
Urban populations in the Pacific will double by 2020.
SPC estimates that 75 per cent of Pacific Island coastal fishers will not meet food security needs by 2030.
Illegal fishing remains one of the greatest challenges for the region, undermining as it does long-term sustainable economic development and food security.
While we think about the future challenges of the region – fast-growing populations and youth bulges, unemployment and poor governance, natural disasters and environmental degradation – it is also important to think about the impact of insecurity and instability.
It is in this vein I would like to talk today about RAMSI, which marks its 11th anniversary this year.
RAMSI is a high watermark of Pacific regionalism.
It arose out of the Pacific Islands Forum Biketawa Declaration, which provides for collective regional action in the event of a security crisis.
This afternoon I will provide a snapshot of some of the key successes and challenges over the life of the mission.
I’m sure many of you have worked in this field and maybe familiar with RAMSI
I expect you have a good understanding of many of these issues and hope my presentation will generate some useful discussion and debate.
RAMSI is a partnership between the people and government of Solomon Islands and fifteen contributing countries of the Pacific region, including many of your countries.
RAMSI’s regional identity is its core underlying strength, and possibly the main reason it is today internationally recognised as one of the most successful stabilisation missions anywhere in the world.
The Australian Government is proud of its ongoing leadership of RAMSI, including the partnership between the Solomon Islands Government and the 15 contributing Pacific countries.
Since it was deployed in 2003, RAMSI has been an overwhelming success, restoring and maintaining law and order, facilitating steady economic growth and helping to rebuild the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force and other key institutions of government.
I think it’s useful to recall how far Solomon Islands has come, and the circumstances which the country faced when RAMSI deployed in 2003.
After five years of ethnic tensions, and a coup in 2000, the problems facing Solomon Islands were many and serious. Law and order had broken down, officials and private citizens were subject to intimidation and violence, and corruption was unfettered.
The Government and its institutions had ceased to function effectively. Corruption was widespread.
Public finances were in ruin and many of the most basic services such as health and education were not being delivered to the people.
In April 2003, Solomon Islands' then Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza sent out a call for help.
In response, under the auspices ofthe Pacific Islands Forum's Biketawa Declaration, the Solomon Islands Government and the fifteenmember countries of the Pacific Islands Forum agreed to establish RAMSI.
The Biketawa Declaration, agreed in 2000, states that "Forum Leaders recognised the need in time of crisis or in response to members’ request for assistance, for action to be taken on the basis of all members of the Forum being part of the Pacific Islands extended family".
As the first RAMSI Special Coordinator pointed out on RAMSI’S first anniversary in 2004, "from Australia’s perspective, intervening to ensure Solomon Islands did not descend into chaos was now an imperative”.
Plainly, a dysfunctional Solomon Islands held long term dangers for Australia and the region.
A country beholden to armed thugs is a recipe for chronic instability.
Such instability is an open invitation to transnational crime. Experience elsewhere shows that weak states are also attractive as havens for money laundering, people smuggling, drug smuggling and terrorism. And while there was no evidence that transnational criminals were targeting Solomon Islands, there was no point waiting for this to happen."
In 2003, its mandate was to:
. restore civil order in Honiara and throughout the rest of the country
. rebuild and reform the machinery of government, improve government accountability and improve the delivery of services in urban and provincial areas
. stabilise government finances, balance the budget and fight corruption, and
. help rebuild the economy and encourage sustainable broad-based growth.
Although RAMSI’s size and composition has changed significantly since 2003, at that time RAMSI was originally made up of four main components:
. The Special Coordinator (who is an Australian diplomat), and the office of the Special Coordinator, was responsible for the overall policy coordination, oversight and strategic direction of all aspects of RAMSI – and still is today.
. The Participating Police Force (PPF) was focused on restoring law and order, collecting weapons and arresting suspected criminals. As the security environment has improved in Solomon Islands, the Participating Police Force has stepped back to allow the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force to take the lead on frontline policing.
. The PPF is now focussed on building the capabilities of the local police force.
. In 2003 RAMSI also included the military Combined Task Force, whose main role was to provide protection for the Participating Police Force and other parts of the Mission. This was necessary due to the serious law and order situation and the large number of illegally-held weapons present in the Solomon Islands community at the time. As time went by, the Combined Task Force also engaged in widespread community engagement and outreach, and in-country training and development.
. Originally there were three separate development programs under RAMSI: the Law and Justice program; the Machinery of Government program; and the Economic Governance program.
Since 2003, thousands of police, military and civilian personnel from across the region have served with RAMSI and worked side by side with Solomon Islanders.
All Pacific Islands Forum member countries have contributed personnel to RAMSI over the life of the mission.
The individual efforts of those who have worked with RAMSI have combined to make a great contribution to the success of the mission and the continuing peace in Solomon Islands.
These contributions have also been important to regional stability and security.
In restoring law and order, and the functions of state in Solomon Islands, it can be argued that RAMSI has prevented the emergence of a security vacuum in the Pacific Region which could well have seen a considerable deterioration of regional security.
RAMSI today
On the 1st of July last year, RAMSI transitioned to a regional policing-only mission.
RAMSI’s development programs shifted to the bilateral aid programs of Australia and New Zealand, as well as other donors.
RAMSI’s focus from now to 2017 is to continue to build the capacity of the Solomon Islands Police Force.
Australia continues to lead RAMSI, through the Office of the Special Coordinator and contributes ninety-five per cent of the mission’s funding, with the remainder provided by the New Zealand Government.
Approximately 100 Australian Federal Police officers remain deployed under RAMSI to support and build the capacity of the Solomon Islands Police Force.
The diversity of cultures and professional experience within RAMSI’s Participating Police Force is rich and varied, and directly contributes to the success of the mission; to stability and peace in Solomon Islands.
It’s important to note at that RAMSI is not the Police Force in Solomon Islands and no longer undertakes front line policing roles.
It remains to build the capacity of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force and to support local officers maintain law and order in their own country.
RAMSI is there to assist, but the Solomon Islands Government (SIG) controls and runs its own police force and manages day to day policing on the ground.
RAMSI’s role is to provide strategic capacity development support to the local police force. Its goal is to help the Solomon Islands police force modernise and professionalise, so as to become a fully sovereign and independent police force which has the full confidence and support of all Solomon Islanders.
RAMSI sees the development of the Solomon Islands police force as a cornerstone of the Solomon Islands. It is already recognized as a key state institution which binds the sometimes disparate parts of the country together.
RAMSI will therefore support the Solomon Islands police force in respect of next month’s elections, in turn supporting the Solomon Islands Government’s efforts to see a free and fair election.
But with this reach, and heightened levels of community expectation, comes significant responsibility. Community expectations of the Solomon Islands Police Force are high.
RAMSI’s challenge will continue to be helping the Solomon Islands Government build the local police force to meet those expectations as an organisation which can be relied upon by Government, and trusted by citizens.
Solomon Islanders rightly expect their police force to be responsive, accountable and disciplined.
Their force has made significant strides in these areas over the years. But it is still a developing entity, and its responsiveness, in particular, has been hampered by challenges, particularly with respect to leadership, mobility and logistics.
So there is still much work for RAMSI to do, and the Pacific region still has a lot at stake in ensuring Solomon Islands remains on a peaceful and stable path.
But in terms of what’s now been achieved, since RAMSI intervened in the Solomon Islands in 2003, government, people and businesses have been able to function free from intimidation and insecurity.
Today Solomon Islands remains largely gun free, and violent crime is stable at low level levels.
The large peace dividend that RAMSI bestowed changed incentives for leaders and former militants.
Importantly it provided the space for economic growth, and one example of this is RAMSI’s work in the introduction of competition into the telecommunications market.
This work has seen access to mobile phones increase from 23 per cent of the population in 2009 to more than 80 per cent today.
In all the mission has been an outstanding success and the Pacific community should be proud of what it has achieved.
As a region the Pacific confronted, and has overcome, significant instability which threatened all of our broader interests.
I’d now like to change tack and take these last few minutes to talk about regional security from the perspective of the territory in which we are currently located and for which I am Australia’s representative – that is, the French Pacific.
It’s clear that, as part of the French Collectivity, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia have an advanced security apparatus and a 7 million square kilometre EEZ in the Pacific.
This zone shares challenges elsewhere in the region, including combatting illegal fishing and transnational crime.
We have a longstanding dialogue here and and we continue to look for new ways to work together, including under the FRANZ – France, Australia, New Zealand – umbrella,
Here in New Caledonia, as competencies have passed from the French State to the New Caledonian Government, new opportunities have emerged to work with the New Caledonia in the broader regional security sphere.
An obvious opportunity is in the area of civil security and emergency management which became a New Caledonia competency on the 1st of January this year.
New Caledonia is also committed to integrating more into the Pacific region.
It already hosts here in Noumea the headquarters of the SPC, which works throughout the Pacific region.
New Caledonia also aspires to be a fully-fledged member of the Pacific Islands Forum, and Australia supports New Caledonia in this aspiration.
As New Caledonia’s institutional future unfolds there will be new opportunities to discuss the security challenges for the region, to ensure our region remains peaceful, secure and stable.
Thank you.
10