A Situational Analysis of the Nexus between Gender-Based Violence, Trafficking in Persons and the Logging Industry in Solomon Islands

From as far back as 2004, both national and international non-governmental organizations have drawn attention to the commercial sexual exploitation of girls and young women practiced openly and with impunity in communities affected by extractive industries, among them the logging industry. This phenomenon occurs, in significant part, through the informal employment of “house girls” by loggers, who are then encouraged or coerced into a sexual relationship, and/or “marriage” to loggers.

This “sale” of girls to foreign workers in the logging sector for the purpose of sex and marriage is arranged by parents, other family members and young male peers. Compensation referred to as “bride price” is paid to the girls’ parents, relatives, or tribe, either in the form of money or material goods. In this way, the social acceptance of child marriage and bride price, considered as kastom, are distorted to facilitate what is, in fact, commercial child sexual exploitation and human trafficking. This report brings together several thematic issues—gender-based violence (GBV) and human trafficking, natural resource governance, traditional customary practices, social norms, pluralistic legal and governance systems, and access to justice and services, among others—in an attempt to articulate structurally entrenched violence and discrimination perpetrated against women and girls in Solomon Islands. It describes the ways in which the current governance and legal system predominantly benefit men, by supporting their control over, and exploitation of, both natural resources and women and girls.