Community Governance and Justice in Solomon Islands Part 1: From Community Officer Pilot to CGGM Project

Abstract

Part 1 of this three-part In Brief series introduces a seven-year project that successfully supported community-level justice in Solomon Islands from 2015 to 2021. It was called the Community Governance and Grievance Management (CGGM) Project, and it sat at the margins of the far larger Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). In contrast to RAMSI, a Honiara-centric state-building mission, the CGGM project focused on rural areas and rural Solomon Islanders’ own desires for local justice. It involved appointing one individual to serve as a Community Officer (CO) in each participating jurisdication, an intervention that resonated strongly with the communities the COs served. In Part 1, we tell the origin story of the project, which is essential to understanding the project’s successes and ongoing challenges, which we take up in Part 2 and Part 3, respectively.