Urbanisation and Migration in Solomon Islands

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SOLOMON ISLANDS 1
Urbanisation is the worldwide phenomenon that is linking with the movement of
people from urban to rural areas. The urban areas are growing faster than the rural areas. In
2011, it is been evolved that the 50% of the world population are existing in urban areas. The
fraction of population of Melanesian countries was much lesser then the recorded figures and
in Solomon Islands it was just 20%. The rapid growth of cities and towns were increasing the
demand for education, housing, utilities and other services (Connell, 2011). Migration is also
a vital phenomenon that affects the growth process of countries worldwide. At Solomon
Islands, inner migration is arrived as a big issue rather than international migration. The
process of migration involves various issues such as providing labour force, encouraging
business development, facilitating education, enabling political participation and many other
issues (Fraenkel, Allen & Brock, 2010). This essay is developed to understand the growth
pattern of Solomon Islands, various issues which involves the migration of people from rural
to urban areas and various facilities and opportunities provided by Government and Private
Sectors to migrants such as housing, infrastructure.
In South-Western Pacific ocean Solomon Islands is situated. Solomon Islands consist
of the coral and double chain of volcanic islands Melanesia and atolls. Solomon Islands are a
sovereign country that consists of 900 small islands and 6 major islands. The total land area
of Solomon Islands is 28400 sq. km. Honiara is the capital of Solomon Islands that is located
on Guadalcanal Island. The majority of Solomon Islanders are Melanesian that is 94.5% and
rest are Micronesian, Polynesian and ethnic Chinese (Foster, 2016). In Solomon Islands
English is an official language but only 2% people are able to communicate fluently in
English. The people of Solomon Islands are Christian and they follow the Christian religion.
The main Christian denominations are Seventh day Adventist that is 10%, United Church in
Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands that are 11%, South Seas Evangelical Church that is
17%, Anglican Church of Melanesia that is 35% and rest are covered by some other region.

SOLOMON ISLANDS 2
In Solomon Islands, schooling is not obligatory only 60% of children have access to primary
education (Lacey, 2011).
Most of the Pacific countries have a solitary leading urban area that is greater than the
next chief urban area, the largest city among them is known as a primate city. Honiara is the
urban area of Solomon Islands (Amnesty International, 2011). The concept of Urban and
rural is not much clear in the Solomon island. Each province that is having administrative
centres except Rennell-Bellona is considered as an urban area small centres are not
considered as urban area.
The concept of migration is started when the people from rural areas or other
countries start moving toward urban areas in search of food, employment, shelter and to fulfil
other basic needs that they are unable to fulfil their needs at their native place. The economy
of Solomon Islands is affected more by internal migration in place of international migration.
As per the Census of 2009, there is no info of out-migration of Solomon Islanders. The
survey of other companies gives a knowledge of the scale of their global movement, but these
data are not available for most countries. The Australian Census 2011 revealed that 1758
residents who are born in Solomon Islands were moved to Australia. Internal movement
comprises of movement which takes place within Solomon Islands may be measured as a
variety of scales (Zhao, 2015). The undertaking within the community or between nearby
village is considered to be as internal migration.
In 2011, Urban Profiling in Solomon Island was started which is followed by a
partnership agreement between UN-Habitat and the Government of Solomon. The agreement
is retort to the maintainable development issues of speedy urbanisation. In Pacific area,
Solomon Island has the chief annual urban growth rate that is 4.7%. The increased rate of
urbanisation is placing huge pressure on urban facility delivery, which is already in short