24 Aug 2011

Ten years of Bougainville peace yield mixed results, says former NZ diplomat

7:08 pm on 24 August 2011

One of the architects of the peace on the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville says ten years after the formal end to the civil war, the results are mixed.

The Bougainville Peace Accords were signed in Arawa in 2001 - four years after a New Zealand initiative brought about a truce in the protracted conflict.

John Hayes, who was a New Zealand diplomat at the time, says there have been several achievements.

"People are not killing themselves, women are not dying in child birth, people are not being raped in a lawless community. I think our police have done a great job. It's good that we've got economic activity slowly, slowly improving. Perhaps on the other side of the ledger it's a bit disappointing that we haven't created more jobs around utilising Bougainville's undenied fish, timber and tourist potential."

John Hayes