BY LYNTON AARON FILIA 

A United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) report highlighted youth unemployment in Solomon Islands is associated with the risk of exploitation.

UNDP’s Solomon Islands Youth Status Report 2018 said youth unemployment is associated with the risk of exploitation – particularly sexual exploitation of young girls around logging and mining camps and foreign fishing vessels.

The findings were compiled from a research carried out in eight provinces across Solomon Islands.

According to the report, Honiara’s street prostitution often involves young women who have experienced abuse at home, while prostitution at hotels and bars involves both local and Asian migrant women.

In the meantime, the report said it is unclear if these trades also include young boys but investigation and prosecution of the sex trade is rare in the country.

However, first case of human trafficking involving a young girl married to a foreign logger was brought before court in September 2017.

Regarding the issues, Government and group of NGOs in the country has been working on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child with aim to address the risk of exploitation.

Now, only Save the Children and UNICEF are actively working on prevention through awareness and child protection programme locally, while the ILO builds capacity through its Pacific Sub Regional Child Labor and Trafficking Program

At the government level, the Advisory Committee on Children informs Cabinet and coordinates the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has pointed to several inconsistencies on minimum ages that could be changed to reflect international standards—the minimum age of criminal responsibility is just 8 years old, employment 12 and marriage 15.

Furthermore with the report it stated lack of adequate opportunities for young people to participate in the informal and formal economy makes lasting peace harder to sustain.

This includes young men who lack direction more prone to recruitment by militant or criminal groups – as happened during the tensions, it said.

Besides, the report also highlighted that Solomon Islands Family Health and Safety Study found a correlation between male unemployment and violence against women.

Lack of employment and livelihood opportunities affects many young people’s sense of self-worth and their ability to participate in social, community and political life.

In Honiara, while there are regulations that set aside certain sectors such as transport for indigenous small businesses, the entry of Asian migrants and their subsequent scapegoating for broader governance failures is also creating a potential security risk.

BY LYNTON AARON FILIA

 THERE have been positive attitudes towards women participating in politics in Solomon Islands.

In the lead up to the Solomon Island’s National General Election (NGE) in 2014, the Solomon Island Electoral Commission (SIEC) conducted a range of Voter Awareness Programmes (VAPs).

These were designed to enhance voter engagement with the electoral system and improve voter awareness of key electoral issues.

With that, a survey shows there have high number of people in the country supporting the participation of women into politics.

From the People’s Survey, the report indicates positive attitudes towards women as leaders in the Solomon Islands; however this has not lead to significant representation of women in politics.

For example, the 2013 People’s Survey reported that 91 percent of respondents considered woman would be a good leader, while the results of the 2014 NGE showed only 2.7 percent of the population voted for women candidates.

In return, only one female Member of Parliament in a 50 member chamber, the report said.

In this survey, SIEC further explore such gap through investigating attitudes of respondents in relation to the capability of women to be politicians, as compared to men.

The findings resulted with 81 percent of respondents considered women to be as skilled as men at being politicians.

82 percent women respondents reported a similar response rate, and while this is a high proportion, it is not quite as high as results from the 2013 People’s Survey.

The positive response rate to women’s level of skill as being a politician when compared to men was relatively consistent across all provinces.

In identifying what women candidates needed to win in their constituency, respondents most frequently noted that having a reputation for helping accounts to 34 percent and demonstrating good personal attributes is 34 percent were critical.

Of the respondents who said women were not as skilled at being a politician as men, 40 percent said that it was not a woman’s role to be a politician or a leader (this was less than 8 percent of overall respondents).

This was similar among both women (35 percent) and men (45 percent).

Overall, 19 percent of respondents (14 percent of women respondents) felt women were not as capable at being politicians as men simply because of their gender.

This suggests that there are further gender-based issues, particularly in promoting women’s representation in politics, to be addressed within the Solomon Islands.

BY BARNABAS MANEBONA

THE current Central Islands Province (CIP) Provincial Government are questioning why the previous Executive of the province had come up with a Shopping Complex project for Tulaghi.

Comparing to the small scale yet in terms of business houses development in Tulaghi, the current Executive see the project as too early to develop such having already spent part of the province past Provincial Capacity Development Fund (PCDF) of around $5 Million.

“We should currently be focusing more on other areas to start off with that are beneficial with the level of scale development that CIP is in at this stage,” said a disappointing Premier for CIP Hon Patrick Vasuni with the understanding that his provincial government is criticized by the people of the province over the incomplete Shopping Complex project.

Nevertheless CIP’s Premier has assured that despite of such, his current provincial Executive will still yet be looking back into this project but will have to wait for the next PCDF funding before they can see how things work out from planning.

CIP this year after being disqualified from the 2015 and 2016 PCDF funding has topped first position in the assessment of PCDFs in the country.

STAFF of the National Statistics Office (NSO) were honoured on Friday last week for their participation during the two weeks of in-depth training on Census Management and CSPro.

Commenced on October 8, the training concluded with certificate presentation on Friday.

“The training is a massive leap for the NSO staff,” Government Statistician, Douglas Kimi said.

It was envisioned to prepare and equip staff with crucial proficiency regarding staff involvement in different levels of census management and operational activities and also impart officers with procedures into editing census data.

Mr Kimi said equipping staff with essential expertise ahead of the 2019 population census is vital.

“Since the census project involves huge operations and the information to be collected will be used and useful in the next ten years, it is important that proper management of census activities, processes together with monitoring/evaluation are being implemented to control and guarantee management of data quality and to complete the Census count,” Kimi emphasised.

Kimi thanked his staff for their patience and cooperation throughout the course of the training and also acknowledged the training facilitator Dr Michael Jonathan Levin for his time and service.

He said the teamwork essence and serenity displayed by participants (staff) has ensued in the training success.

The training was the first of its kind for the NSO and the presentation contents are similar to the recommended UN revised Population handbook together with the approved international standards, classifications and definitions.

Meanwhile, participants thanked the NSO management for making the training accessible and pledged to put into practice what has been learned.

–SINSO MEDIA

BY LORETTA BRIGIDIA MANELE

SUCCESSFUL and financially feasible public spending to reduce poverty requires targeting to prevent the benefits dripping into the hands of the non-poor.

This was expressed in the “Solomon Islands Poverty Maps Based in the 2012/13 Household Income and Expenditure Survey and the 2009 Census of Population” report.

The report emphasized that if poor households can be easily identified, transfer payments and other direct interventions can be made with the approach of giving directly advocated in the form of conditional cash transfers.

However, also stated was that there are concerns regarding the above mechanism’s applicability, particularly because of unknown interplay between new sources of social transfers and existing informal safety net with the inclusion that informational requirements for screening and the financial infrastructure for making direct payments may not be present.

On top of that, the report says distributing benefits to only a number of people in any one village or area requires institutions and personnel that can withstand temptations of corruption and reciprocal obligations that can be present in clan-based societies.

The study mentioned that if there is relatively high number of poor people in certain areas, spatial targeting may be attainable in which extra development projects and public services are provided for everyone in those areas.