August 2007 Edition

Stories include: 2007 International Prize for Restorative Justice Awarded to PEACE Foundation Melanesia; The Bougainville Project of PEACE Foundation Melanesia; Incorporating Custom Law into State Law in Melanesia; “Operation Regeneration”: Applying the Lessons of Bougainville to International Peace Operations; Book Review: Breaking Spears & Mending Hearts: Peacemakers & Restorative Justice in Bougainville; Video Review: Breaking Bows and Arrows.

2007 International Prize for Restorative Justice Awarded to PEACE Foundation Melanesia

The 2007 International Prize for Restorative Justice has been awarded to PEACE Foundation Melanesia (PEACE) for its remarkable and important peacemaking work in post-war Bougainville. The $5000 (US) prize was presented in Toronto, Ontario by the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation at Prison Fellowship International (which publishes Restorative Justice Online) and Prison Fellowship Canada.

The Bougainville Project of PEACE Foundation Melanesia

Founded in 1995, PEACE Foundation Melanesia is a grassroots organization working on peacemaking in Papua New Guinea. Much of its early work focused on Bougainville training village leaders to be peacemakers.

Incorporating Custom Law into State Law in Melanesia1

In this article, Pat Howley describes the revival of custom law in Bougainville and its importance in building peace.

“Operation Regeneration”: Applying the Lessons of Bougainville to International Peace Operations

Using lessons learned from Bougainville, this article presents a hypothetical civil war and how peace operations might respond. The article is excerpted from the PhD dissertation of Peter Reddy who studied peacemaking operations in Bougainville and Somalia. His complete dissertation, Peace Operations and Restorative Justice: Groundwork for Post-conflict Regeneration, is attached.

Book Review: Breaking Spears & Mending Hearts: Peacemakers & Restorative Justice in Bougainville

Breaking Spears & Mending Hearts tells the story of civil war violence in the Melanesian island of Bougainville and the rediscovery of peacemaking mechanisms used to overcome such violence.

Video Review: Breaking Bows and Arrows.

This documentary offers a gripping and powerful picture of the traditional processes that have helped build peace in Bougainville after the civil war. It provides a wonderful complement to the articles in this edition of Restorative Justice Online because it allows the viewer to watch the processes described and explored in those articles.