Child Protection Consultation in the Solomon Islands, Capacity Building or Welfare Colonialism

Since 2003, when the Solomon Islands ethnic conflict ended some of the Regional Assistance Mission Solomon Islands (RAMSI) aid agenda has been rectifying damage done to families and child care so that the nation’s future citizens are untroubled by trauma. Part of the Australian UNICEF (Pacific) to assist the Solomon Islands Government to develop systems that will ensure the protection and care of children. UNICEF and a range of other child - protection focussed NGOs comprise a significant presence in Solomon Islands and as they are well staffed and well resourced they appear to have significantly greater impact on the development of child-welfare than does the less well resourced Social Welfare Division (SWD) of the Ministry of Health. This powerimbalance has significant implications for the development of independent democratic nationhood. An important national agenda relating to families and the care of children is being determined by bodies that are external to the national governance. One crucial determinant of the capacity-building /versus/neo-colonial credentials of these efforts relates to the way consultation is carried out within the nation prior to policy and legislative development. Several processes that characterise neo-colonial approaches are highlighted in this paper. The paper argues that external international development agencies and workers (including ex-pats) must centre Solomon Island sovereignty (both Indigenous sovereignty and in state governance) in their approach to child protection consultation as current methods replicate and maintaincolonising relationships.