BY LORETTA B MANELE

One of the biggest challenges in the Pacific are PPWs or Potentially Polluting Wrecks.

This was expressed by Dr Zullah Mohammed, the Pollution Advisor for SPREP (Secretariat for the Pacific Regional Environment Programme) who spoke on PPWs at the “Marine Pollution Incident Resilience in the Pacific Islands” workshop that was held at the Heritage Park Hotel last week.

Mohammed said SPREP developed a regional strategy that was more focused on the World War 2 wrecks and the current focus for them in the region or globally is the triple planetary crisis which include; climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

“What we are talking about here is one of our biggest challenges in the region, the potential polluting wrecks. We have international rules that covers the World War II wrecks, but in our region, I think we still come across those challenges of managing them”

Mohammed mentioned that not all countries in the region have World War 2 wrecks and every other member country of SPREP actually have fishing vessels, convention vessels and domestic vessels.

He explained while some vessels are sunk intentionally others are sunk unintentionally.

Mohammed said it was in 2014 that SPREP member countries agreed to identify and characterize wrecks.

“MDF actually has got an exhaustive list of those 3,800 wrecks that we have in the region and they have mapped with the historical data in terms of the volume of different type of fuel it holds”

Mohammed said that apart from this, there are some risks assessment carried out with some of those wrecks, but still there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

He added that following the development of their regional strategy and the reporting back to our members, the next step basically was for them to agree on intervention of different risk level.

Mohammed stressed that before moving further, one of the important questions they need to ask SPREP member countries is what they will do about the wrecks they have in their backyards.

“How do we agree on a regional level the interventions that a regional agency such as us can actually take with the development partners and donors?”

“How do we actually plan up a short-term, medium and a long-term strategy to manage these wrecks?”

Mohammed said in the last executive board meeting following the recent triple planetary crisis, they got the approval to revise their regional strategy.

BY JOHN HOUANIHAU

Government authorities do not take legal action in response to human rights violation contained in media reports in the country.

This was highlighted during a panel discussion at a Human Rights Defenders workshop last week, which also saw the establishment of a working group to set up Solomon Islands’ first Human Rights Defender Network.

Irwin Angiki, Island Sun Newspaper’s sub-editor and one of the panelists, shared that the Newspaper on average produces nearly 11,000 local stories every year – almost half of which directly report human rights violations or imply them.

When asked by a participant whether their stories containing elements of human rights violation receive action by government authorities, Mr Angiki said “the sad answer or fact to your question is no”.

He shares that government authorities have been flaunting their own channels of receiving complaints, which they adamantly stick to despite reading and being aware of human rights violation issues from the media.

Government authorities prioritise their reporting procedures above the incidents, which results in many human rights violation incidents in Solomon Islands ending up only being a media report – nothing else.

Renowned local women’s and environmental rights activist Afu Lia Billy also shared the same sentiment as one of the key panelists at the event. 

“We work a lot against violence against women but the authorities like the police are not very supportive,” said Ms Afu.

Afu said that while there is already legislation in place like the Family Protection Act, work cannot happen without support and resources from the government.

“Legislation should have resources attached to it so work can be implemented and in addition, the government didn’t see Human rights as a priority,” she said.

She said there are some major challenges working in this space.

“When you ring the police to attend to a case, all they are saying is there is no transport.

“There should be an educated unit within the Police Unit regarding Human rights defenders and just for violence against women and also a vehicle to run and respond.

“Without resources, nothing will happen. I want the donors to step in where these shortfalls have come in,” she said.

The three-day workshop was run by the Pacific Human Rights Defenders Network in partnership with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Swiss embassy in Canberra, which was held at the Heritage Park Hotel.

JOHN HOUANIHAU

Studies have found that 78 percent of child abuse perpetrators were immediate family members.

Dr Natasha Khan a Human rights defender in Fiji, and also the current Chair of the Pacific Human Rights Defenders’ Network said at the recently concluded human rights defender (HRD) workshop in Honiara.

Natasha said the findings were made possible through research they conducted in 2019 for the Department of Women and Children in Fiji regarding the causes relating to child abuse and violence.

She highlighted the matter when she responded to a question raised by one of the USP-SI students on the rise and the cause of increased rape cases in the country.

According to Khan, she said that they found two major reasons for child abuse or sexual violence across the board.

“One is the opportunity- the perpetrator had the opportunity and accessibility to the child and Two is the security, perpetrators knew that they would get away with it or they did not know what abuse is,’’ she said. 

Khan said that there is a common assumption that the stepfathers or strangers are bad.

“The assumption in our minds that stepfathers and strangers are bad yet it’s the ones inside our home, the homes,’’ she said.

“78% of the perpetrators were immediate family members, grandfathers, fathers. The majority of them are brothers, fathers, grandfathers. Stepfathers only make up 7.5%,’’ said Khan.

She said that it is something the Solomon Islands could also look at in terms of conducting research and providing data on the ground to find out the root cause of increased child abuse, especially rape in the country.

“So, this is something the Solomon Islands can look at, like collecting data and doing some research, something similar to find out what causes child abuse in the community,’’ she said.