Generation Exploited

Barely 200 m from the Point Cruz yacht club, where cheery expatriates are enjoying their Wednesday-night drinks, Junelyn is fighting back tears on the Honiara dockside. She searches the faces of the three child prostitutes hiding in the shadows. One by one, she asks them, "Have you seen my daughter?" Finally, a girl admits Junelyn's runaway 12-year-old has been working alongside them as a "dugong" - the local term for a young prostitute - servicing the foreign freighters that anchor off the Solomon Islands capital to collect tuna caught by local fishing boats. On the wharf where the child was last seen, Customs officer Moses Tare says he spotted five young girls on a freighter during his last water patrol but has no authority to remove them. "I rang the police," he tells the desperate Junelyn. "They said they were on the way. That was three hours ago." Junelyn turns away. She has a new lead to follow, courtesy of another underage prostitute. She heads for the thumping bass of the Top 10 nightclub, where some of the freighters' crewmen are downing their Solbrew beers.

For many in the Solomons, life has improved dramatically since mid-2003, when an Australian-led rescue effort - the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) - arrived to calm long-running ethnic tensions and prevent the country from falling into anarchy. Dozens of violent militants are in jail or on trial, thousands of weapons have been confiscated, and corruption investigations are cranking up. Australia will spend $A247 million this year on its participation in RAMSI; other South Pacific nations are also giving security help. The shattered economy is gaining momentum, and an election is scheduled for April 5.

But the forces of law and order have yet to make an impact on several illicit criminal enterprises. And none is as visible and pervasive as the one that has snared Junelyn's pubescent daughter. A report on child sexual exploitation in the Solomons, commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund (unicef), was completed in 2004 but has never been publicly released. A copy obtained by Time documents dozens of examples of child sexual abuse - from underage prostitution to the manufacture of child pornography, child sex tourism and marriages of convenience. The report has been in the hands of the Solomon Islands government and ngos, as well as Australia's AusAID, for more than a year. It calls for an investigation of the allegations, tough countermeasures including a comprehensive child protection law, rapid tightening of existing laws against child abuse, regulation of the hotel industry, and a police crackdown on the exploitation of children. But most of the allegations have never been investigated, and many of the report's key recommendations have still not been implemented. Unwieldy laws carry vague definitions of child abuse; the age of consent varies according to circumstances; tribal traditions are exploited by ruthless foreigners; and strict time limits on reporting offenses make prosecution difficult. The Solomon Islands' Law Reform Commission, designed to review and strengthen weak laws, has been inactive for months while the government advertises for staff. Why has so little been done? "I think people are scared," says one of the report's authors, Sister Doreen Awaiasi, who runs a refuge for abused women and children outside Honiara. "We gave them our report, but it's up to the government to accept it. We lobbied them. We wanted to protect the girls." More disturbing, she adds, is that "politicians are involved in some of those things. It needs to be investigated quickly."

She and co-author Helen Newton, an Australian counselor, spent weeks in 2004 traveling across the Solomons and documenting instances of abuse for the first time. Medical, prison and ngo officials were interviewed; sensitive issues were brought into the open in focus groups and in meetings with women, youths and villagers. Among the allegations: n Nine boys, aged six to 14, told how they had survived on the streets for the previous three years by charging the equivalent of $A1 a time to have sex with the crews of Japanese-owned fishing boats. "It is very painful, but I need money for food," one of the children told the unicef researchers.

n Four expatriate teachers - three men and a woman - were sexually abusing underage students. They reportedly offered the students inducements ranging from small gifts to financial help with school fees.

n Eighteen girls from two villages on the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal island were either forced at gunpoint or given money or food to have sex with militants which resulted in them becoming pregnant. One of the girls, who was 11 when she was raped, told researchers her attacker still lives in her village: "I am now 14 years old and he still has sex with me nearly every week."

n A taxi driver forced at least 15 young girls from a remote village to pay him in sex for rides to school. Seven became pregnant to the driver, who confessed to his pastor. The driver was not reported to police.

RAMSI's special coordinator, Australian diplomat James Batley, acknowledges that stopping child exploitation is an urgent problem, and says his team is "reinforcing the system" for doing so. But he points out that the mission's mandate is to help the Solomons government perform its role more effectively. To that end, it has focused on the most pressing problems: a lack of security and essential services. Much of the effort by RAMSI's Participating Police Force and the Royal Solomon Islands Police "has to be put into the task of getting the pieces of this fragmented institution (the RSIP) operating as a whole," Batley says. "Until that happens, there will be limited success in the pursuit and prosecution of specific areas such as child sex offences. The one thing not to forget is that RAMSI is not the only player on the ground here. We would want to be guided by where the Solomon Islands government wants to take this issue.''

Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza was not available to comment last week. Newly appointed Police and Justice Minister Simeon Bouro blames a lack of manpower for the government's apparent failure to curb child exploitation, and says he has not heard that politicians are involved. Only three government welfare workers can be called on to help the victims; they service a population of about 500,000 across a vast archipelago. Worse, senior officials dismiss or play down unicef's allegations. "I think that report was biased," says Ruth Liloqula, who until last month was permanent secretary of the Home Affairs Department. "It only refers to about 7% of children. We need to do more research on it." And, in a refrain heard all too often in the Solomons, she demands more help from RAMSI: "Our budget is only about $SI2 million ($A400,000). So far RAMSI has not put any advisors in to help the actual human side of things."

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