TSI warns extractive logging risks child exploitation in Solomon Islands, urging stronger laws, oversight and protection.
Transparency Solomon Islands (TSI) is deeply concerned about mounting evidence linking extractive sector activities, particularly large-scale logging operations, with the exploitation of vulnerable women and children in rural communities across Solomon Islands.
Independent reports, media investigations, and international human rights assessments have identified logging areas as high-risk environments where underage relationships, transactional arrangements referred to as “log marriages in a number of reports,” and sexual exploitation have been reported. This is a serious matter involving very young and vulnerable women and girls.
In reported cases, girls as young as 13 have allegedly entered relationships with foreign workers under arrangements involving financial or material exchange. Whether framed as custom or informal agreements, such practices raise serious child protection and potential trafficking concerns.
Research by UNICEF, international labour monitoring bodies, and regional NGOs has consistently identified remote extractive sites as environments of heightened vulnerability to commercial sexual exploitation and child abuse. Studies have also highlighted how customary practices, including bride price, may in some instances be distorted or monetised in ways that mask intimidation or exploitation.
These are not abstract risks. They are patterns of vulnerability that have been repeatedly raised in national and international assessments.
While Solomon Islands has strengthened aspects of its legal framework, including amendments to sexual offences laws and measures under immigration and anti-trafficking legislation, implementation challenges exist and remain. Prosecution rates for trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation remain limited. Enforcement, monitoring are either non-existence, absent or influenced by foreigners. Data collection is inconsistent. Oversight, monitoring in remote areas and areas close to Honiara and accessible is either absent or non-existence or weak. Addition to that, on a serious note, communities affected by extractive operations lack information, they are ill-informed of the law compounded by difficulties in accessing reporting mechanisms and adequate survivor support services. All are centralised in the capital, Honiara.
Civil society organisations, including HOPE Trust, Hagar Solomon Islands, and the Family Support Centre, have made commendable efforts to address child protection risks. Community bylaws prohibiting child marriage in parts of Guadalcanal demonstrate that local leadership can act decisively. Community elders, leaders, and families also bear responsibility in safeguarding children. However, isolated efforts cannot substitute for systematic, systemic nationwide enforcement and institutional oversight.
The extractive sector generates significant economic value. However, no revenue stream justifies environments where vulnerable children face heightened risks of exploitation. The revenue generated is also mired with forest crimes such as money laundering and very little to no knowledge of the transnational dynamics and drivers of forestry crime. This is but a forest crime committed by Asian logging companies.
Asian logging companies in particular Malaysian Logging Companies mode of operation is entrenched in the relationships between Malaysian timber tycoons and the Malaysian government. This is also the formula they are using and re-producing in Solomon Islands both in logging and mining. It is therefore important for the government to acknowledge that collaborative and cross-national efforts are required to address these “log marriages” and many more crimes of forest that deny Solomon Islands the benefit that it should earned from the exploitation of its forest and protect our women and children.
TSI believes this issue is not solely a social protection concern. What is occurring within the forest sector also has serious financial and governance implications. Exploitation linked to extractive activities disrupts communities, weakens accountability systems, and undermines sustainable development.
TSI therefore urges the Government, key stakeholders, and development partners to pursue strategic approaches to tracing financial flows and dismantling networks that enable crimes associated with forest exploitation. Such efforts are essential not only to protect women and children from abuse, but also to safeguard what remains of our forests and to promote transparent and sustainable governance.
It is deeply concerning that only a small number of parliamentarians or one politician that consistently advocate for accountability and continue to speak out on these issues. Stronger and broader political leadership is needed to confront these challenges with urgency and resolve.
In the discussion of the exploitation of women and children in the logging sector it is important that we do not forget other crimes that overlap with forest crimes such as drugs, money-laundering, wildlife trafficking, and many more.
This is fundamentally a governance and accountability issue.
Where extractive licences are granted, where camps are established, and where foreign labour operates, there must be:
- Clear monitoring of social impacts
- Mandatory child protection safeguards
- Enforced compliance mechanisms
- Transparent reporting of abuse allegations
- Accountability for perpetrators and systemic enablers
Free and fair economic development requires integrity. Development that undermines the safety and dignity of women and children cannot be considered sustainable or ethical.
TSI calls for immediate and coordinated national action. The Government must strengthen enforcement of child protection and anti-trafficking laws, including reviewing the legal marriage age to align with international standards. Relevant ministries responsible for forestry, policing, and women, youth, and children’s affairs must establish joint monitoring and compliance mechanisms for logging and other extractive sites.
Logging companies and licence holders must be required, as a condition of their licence, to adopt and implement a Code of Conduct, a Child Protection Policy, and other relevant safeguarding frameworks. These safeguards must be actively enforced and publicly disclosed as a condition of operation.
Development partners should prioritise strengthening rural child protection systems and expanding survivor support services in extractive-affected provinces. Parliament must ensure that economic governance reforms incorporate mandatory social impact accountability measures.
Silence normalises exploitation. Transparency exposes it.
Solomon Islands cannot afford a development model where rural poverty, weak oversight, and extractive wealth intersect to endanger children. Protecting vulnerable communities is not optional; it is both a constitutional and moral obligation.
Transparency Solomon Islands will continue to advocate for governance reforms that ensure economic activity upholds the rights, dignity, and protection of all Solomon Islanders, more especially our children.
Source: TSI Press Release
