Working Paper - Institutional and Fiscal Analysis of Lower-level Courts in Solomon Islands

Abstract

Justice interventions in Solomon Islands over the last decade have focused largely on assisting Honiarabased state institutions in the form of a variety of capacity-building programs. This has included a heavy reliance on expatriate expertise positioned in central justice agencies. The National Judiciary has benefited significantly from this support, although to date the direct effects of increased assistance have not been felt in most parts of the country. In part this has been because of a heavy focus on processing the vast amount of criminal cases emanating from the 1998-2003 period of civil conflict, locally referred to as the tension. Matters related to the tension have occupied the time and resources of Honiara-based justice institutions, particularly the courts. As tension investigations and trials have subsided there has been a growing recognition of the limits of the capacity-building approaches adopted to date (see Cox, Duituturaga and Scheye 2012). Government, together with donor partners, has been grappling with future spaces and modalities of support. Since 2010, the World Bank Justice for the Poor (J4P) program has supported the Justice Delivered Locally (JDL) initiative of the Solomon Islands Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs. The JDL initiative is aimed at reinvigorating local-level justice services to meet the demands of the 80 percent of the population living outside the capital, Honiara.