 Well, it's my great pleasure to welcome Nicholas Koppel, special coordinator with the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands and a career diplomat. Welcome to the program. We're introducing the world to this extraordinary conference and you've just given a fascinating paper about transitions focusing on Ramsey. Just remind us what is Ramsey and in a nutshell the mission of Ramsey? Well Ramsey stands for the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands. It was invited in by the government of Solomon Islands in 2003. It's regional, it involves all the Pacific Island countries, Pacific Island foreign member countries, it's been led by Australia and it came in as a rather unusual mission from the outset because it had a civilian component, indeed it was led by a civilian, a policing component and a military component. So from the outset it was designed to address all the issues, the central issues that were undermining the Solomon Islands at the time in 2003. And there was big trouble, big instability, problems with violence? Serious problems with violence, there was systematic violence, there were a lot of weapons in the community that had been stolen from police armories. Many of the police themselves were implicated in the thuggery that was going on. There was a general breakdown in government order, in the functioning of government departments, many saw it as becoming a failing state and it led to the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands unable to control the situation, unable to see where the solution was within his own country to seek outside assistance. This conference has a major theme, transitions and obviously your paper has been totally about that. But one thing that struck me was that the fact that you were invited in, you see as critical to the effective process of transition that you're doing now. Could you speak to that? Yes, I think the number of factors that have contributed to the success of Ramsey's omission, but the most important of those is that it was invited in. I mean it was been welcomed by the government, it was a unanimous vote in the parliament to invite Ramsey in, but it's also had the support of the people. There is a survey that's been conducted every year that shows that support for Ramsey has always been around 84 to 86 percent. So it's been welcomed. So it's not seen as an invasion or an outside force imposing values or a way of doing things on a reluctant people. No, it's the people that have wanted Ramsey to come in. And that has meant that Ramsey has been able to work as a partnership with the Solomon Islands. There's also a regional dimension and a strong legal framework and you've emphasised the importance of that. Can you explain that? Yes, it's a regional mission. It's all 15 Pacific Island forum countries contributing to Ramsey from the outset. Obviously not all of them have armed forces, but they all have police forces and they've contributed police to Ramsey's omission. The legal framework is both at a treaty level. There's a treaty, a Ramsey Treaty from 2003, as well as an Act of Parliament, the Facilitation of International Assistance Act from 2003. And why do those legal instruments play a critical role in achieving your goals and in helping in transition? I mean, most people wouldn't even conceptually understand that it had happened. So why does it help? You need a certain legal basis. There will be individuals, maybe from time to time, that might want to question your presence there, because perhaps they would prefer the old days when they were running amok. That a legal framework means that we can stay there and not be challenged in the courts. But it also provides certainty to the people of the Solomon Islands and the government of Solomon Islands that we will act in a certain way. It provides the boundaries around us as well. And the us in this situation is a whole cluster of people. I mean, you've said you've got regional policing, so police from all over the Pacific. So is it boundaries for, I don't know how to describe the bundle of people that make up Ramsey and the Solomons, but is it a kind of set of boundaries that help you work coherently and cogently as an international team as well? Well, that comes down to my role as the special coordinator, and that's the title, special coordinator, because it has those disparate elements. It has civilian, police, military. It has contributions from all these different countries. We have a relationship with the Solomon Islands government. We have a relationship with the Pacific Islands Forum. We have a relationship with contributing countries. Bringing that all together into a coherent, unified forces comes under my office, the office of the special coordinator. And have all the special coordinators been diplomats like you? Yes, the special coordinators. I'm the fifth. I've always been senior Australian diplomats. Because I wonder if that's part of the success of this. And I'm going to come to the transition in a moment, but if there's one thing I've learned at this conference already, is that the transition begins from the day you enter the location, if it's going to be a good transition later. Would you agree with that as an idea? Yes, and I think that initial design of Ramsey, which I wasn't involved in, was a particularly clever one, and that it understood that it wasn't just about security. There had to be a building up of the capability and the capacity of the Solomon Islands. And work on that began from day one, just as it began on weapons recovery. Yes, you're planning your exit from the moment you come. It's just that you emphasise in your presentation at the conference communication consultation and that very positive relationship with the local population. And I'm just wondering if diplomats have a particular set of communication skills that really help? Well, I think so, yes. And I think it's not just communication skills, but an ability to work across cultures. And that's been important in the success of a regional mission. Could you give me an example? Like a sticky question that sensitivity to culture helped you sort out? Well, I think Solomon Islands' culture is different from other cultures in the Pacific and different from culture in Australia. And how we work with Solomon Islanders, how we communicate with them. For example, in Australia, in a conversation, you don't have periods of silence. I mean, people fill the vacuum. But in Solomon Islands, silence is more common. Our instinct is to jump in to fill that. But in the Solomon Islands, it's a period where you stand back and you're in the listening mode. And you must allow the other person to listen. And understanding issues like that has been important to get to know and understand the other side. Let's go to this question of transition, because you're in the midst of it. If you were giving a definition to a student at university, how would you define it? Well, it is sort of a collective word. I mean, transition is a process. And one of the things I mentioned in my talk is the way we're transitioning for each of the component parts of Ramsey, the civilian, military and policing is different. So transition means different things in different contexts. So there isn't one definition. But essentially, it's that process of moving from the intervention to the period when you can hand matters back fully to the local government. So times of change where you're giving back power, you know, is one rough definition. Yes, although I'd say the power is always with with the independent sovereign states, the government of Solomon Islands, we're there to assist them to restore law and order, to restore governance in their country. That's the partnership. Let me come to this question of timing, because you said basically in transition, timing is everything. And there'll be different timing for military, police, civilian, economic development and so on. So talk about timing. If we learn nothing else, what do we need to know about timing? Well, timing, I mean, as I mentioned, there are two risks to transition. And one risk is that you leave too soon. The other risk is that you leave too late. If you leave too soon, you see a resumption of violence or at least threats of violence coming back. And I don't think we're in that situation. If you leave too late, it can be that the dependency on the outsiders sets in where the outsiders are the one that are responsible for law and order. The outsiders are responsible for ensuring that the government is functioning well. It's always there to do things. And that too would be a problem, because, you know, the country needs to be responsible for itself. We're there to assist it to do that. So timing is about making a judgment of when it is safe to transition out, in the case of the military, in the area of development assistance, where you can shift it to a more longer term, normal development partners. And the military going to be transitioning out in 2013? And is the essence of why that can happen, that you've got the legal system functioning again, and police are operational? It's based on also an assessment of the risks of a return to militancy. An assessment of the security environment. There are still law and order issues in the country, but there are issues which are best addressed and appropriately addressed by a police force, rather than a military force. And you've got a lot of the weapons out. Yes. How critical was that? What did you do and how important is it? Well, an amnesty was offered in 2003 shortly after Ramsey's arrival, and most weapons were handed in then. But the community is handed in the weapons. It's a clear sign that the community, the people of Solomon Islands were wanting peace, because they put pressure on the militants. Look, I want to come to the importance of economic development and also of managing urbanisation, because you've emphasised them as critical going forward. But I want to mention a topic that's sort of hard to find space to mention, but you mentioned it briefly, and that is violence against women. Because in the end, we, a regional grouping of people, went into the Solomon Islands because of violence. But was it only the public violence we were there for? Is the domestic violence still a private matter? Because, as I understand it, violence against women and children is still a very big issue in the region and in the Solomon Islands. Does that come within the remit of Ramsey? Well, you're right, it is a significant issue in the Solomon Islands. It comes under the remit of Ramsey in the sense that we are rebuilding the Solomon Islands police force and strengthening their capacities and training them. And training them in matters such as family violence is an important part of that. Ramsey itself doesn't conduct investigations and provide answers to family violence. Ramsey's approach is to build up the institutions in the Solomon Islands so that they are capable of addressing it. And is gender considered significant? I mean, you mentioned that one sign of hope in the Solomon Islands is that the leaders have been marrying wives from different cultural groups or regional groups. Well, that's hope. But it also says that there's not women in the political leadership. Indeed, up until very recently, all the members of parliament were male. There's recently a by-election and the wife of the former member was elected to parliament. So we have one member of parliament in Solomon Islands who's a woman. Some of the permanent secretaries, the heads of government agencies, are female. But it's overwhelmingly a male at the senior positions, a man. And how significant a topic is this? There's one session at this conference that will look at women's issues. But in bringing of stabilization, the transition of a volatile society to stability and economic development and security, you mentioned education. Well, that brings in children. But where do the women and children fit in this conference? Well, what I would say is, I mean, Ramsey came in with a certain mandate. That mandate were those urgent problems that were addressing the country of the collapse of the economy, the collapse of governance, the collapse of law and order. So that's, its mandate has been focused on those things. That's not to say that health and education infrastructure are unimportant or indeed failings in those areas haven't contributed to troubles. Well, in the few moments we have left, you emphasise the management of urbanisation linked to economic development as critical in the future of the Solomon's. What's the essence of the problem and what needs to happen? Well, it's a problem which many parts of the world experience, where you get movement from the land to the city. In the case of the Solomon Islands, it's complicated because people are moving from different provinces where there are different ethnic identities. And the city, the main city, is only Honeara. So the primary movement is from all parts of the country as well as rural Guadalcanal to Honeara. And they're coming in search of work for better opportunities in life, better education and better health. But it creates a large group of people, many of whom are not getting work, who are living in fairly informal settlements or spotter settlements on the outsides. And that has the risk of creating a pool of... Unemployed boys, let's be honest. I'm a mother. Indeed. Really, it should be more serious. Unemployed young men cause dilemmas in urbanisation. They certainly can and that's been the history in the Solomon Islands as well. So addressing those issues of urbanisation, ensuring that community services are provided, whether it be education, health, infrastructure, sewage, power, are important for embracing those communities so that they do not become a disaffected group of outsiders while there is a prosperous elite operating within and creating those differences and tensions that can occur. But embracing them, ensuring they have a stake in society, is important for ongoing security. Which brings us just finally to economic development and in the end is all of Ramsey fundamentally about a security environment that allows economic development to occur again because that's about jobs and about tax and that brings up in health and education once you've got some tax. Well, you're right. They're all linked. You cannot just come in and address security, but that's why Ramsey had those other elements from the outset. It was recognising the interlinkages between law and order and economic prosperity, between economic prosperity and government revenue, between government revenue and government services. They're all connected and you cannot just address one and say we'll deal with the other later. They need to be addressed simultaneously for the problems to be addressed effectively. And just finally, you're optimistic about the future for the Solomon Islands? Yes, I am. I think the people of Solomon Islands have experienced a number of years now of peace, a number of years of economic prosperity. And I think they're very clear in their minds that the recent period of peace and prosperity is preferable to the period before. Many people were affected by the tensions before. They had their lives interrupted. Many were forced to return to their villages and provinces. Many people, it's not just jobs were lost, but their education was interrupted as well. So there is that lost period. And the more recent times I think have benefited them and they understand that. And there is a real demand for peace, I think, amongst the people of the Solomon Islands. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.