Gordon Peake

Police-Building in Weak States: Australian Approaches in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands

Australia is engaged in a range of police-building exercises with its regional neighbours. The character of this assistance has changed across time and space reflecting, among other things, the development of new approaches to police-building in weak and post-conflict states. This article examines three such approaches adopted in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, respectively. Both countries comprise challenging development contexts marked by high levels of social diversity and topographical fragmentation, weak centralised states, resilient and largely self-regulating village-based societies, and police forces with limited reach, resources, and popular legitimacy. Among other things, the review of Australian police-building experience in the Pacific Islands indicates the need to engage more effectively with non-state actors and organizations in building appropriate and sustainable policing systems in such fragile national environments.

Policebuilding: The International Deployment Group in the Solomon Islands

Increasingly, significant numbers of personnel are deployed in field missions either to serve as police officers or to assist in reforming national police capacity. Reforming and building a police system – in this article termed ‘policebuilding’ – is exceedingly difficult, demanding the condensing of diverse training skills in a very short period and fast-forwarding the development of skills that are ideally built up over generations. This article examines the Australian initiative of 2004 that broke with the makeshift pattern of international police reform by forming an International Police Deployment Group (IDG). It assesses the deployment to the Solomon Islands in order to draw out lessons for future instances in which IDG officers may be called upon. The IDG appears to offer an apt structure, depth of planning, continuity of staffing and steadiness of resourcing that past missions have lacked. Yet, while relative calm and basic levels of law and order have been restored to the Solomon Islands, transferring authority and successfully supporting local police reform has proven to be more difficult.

More Than Just Policing: Police Reform in Post-conflict Bougainville

Against the generally disappointing outcomes of international police reform in fragile settings, this article examines a New Zealand-supported community policing programme in post-conflict Bougainville. While the programmes engagement with the regular police organization has struggled for traction, support provided to an innovative and socially embedded policing initiative has produced promising results. The reasons behind these divergent outcomes and their implications for international policing are explored in the context of Bougainvilles recent history, including the legacies of conflict and the new vision of hybrid policing in the post-conflict political settlement.

Experimentation and innovation in police reform Timor-Leste, Solomon Islands and Bougainville

The plural character of policing provision in most countries is now widely acknowledged, though rarely reflected in the practical police reform programming undertaken by donors. While much of the literature on international police assistance focuses on its modest results and innate limitations, less attention has been paid to those still relatively rare programmes that have sought to engage with the local realities of plural policing. This is particularly so in the conflict-affected and fragile settings where such assistance is typically provided. In this article, we present three case studies of policing innovation and experimentation from Timor-Leste, Solomon Islands and Bougainville, respectively, set in the context of the recent and very different post-conflict interventions in each place. While not wishing to overstate the impact of these modest programmes, we highlight their potential contribution to fostering productive relations across the multiple social orders and sources of authority found in many post-colonial, post-conflict and otherwise fragile contexts. We tentatively conclude that the most significant contribution of these kinds of initiative is likely to lie beyond the realm of institutionalised policing and, specifically, in relation to larger processes of social and political change, including state formation, under way in these places.

Partnerships and International Policing: The Reach and Limits of Policy Processes

Although the concept of partnership offers little substantively new to the theory and practice of peace operations, it provides a useful political frame to advance reform efforts in UN policing. In the last few years, several improvements have been made in doctrine, training and increasing the pace of deployment. However, the case of Timor-Leste suggests that these efforts have not resulted in obvious improvements in the abilities of the UN Police (UNPOL) to carry out their mandated functions. Solutions offered by the New Horizon agenda are technical and do not address the political dimensions of the problems encountered in field missions. In Timor-Leste, the host government is not interested in engaging in a partnership with UNPOL. Problems with international policing may be so deep, complex and subject to politics that even substantial process-oriented solutions will not achieve significant results.