In the Pacific, it has been found that community leaders such as chiefs and church leaders resolve conflict on a day to day basis often preventing needless escalation of disputes.
A University of Queensland researcher, Morgan Brigg, says research in Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu shows peace and order is most often dealt with at grass roots levels.
“The formal justice system is often remote from people, police may be a long way away, it maybe difficult or expensive to get access to the court system, so its actually chiefs and church leaders predominantly, we’ve found, who are often doing a lot of the everyday conflict management work,” he says.
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