Captain Rachel Leal of 1st Intelligence Battalion

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was an Australian-led peacekeeping operation which started in 2003 and lasted ten years. The mission combined civilian and military aid in an international effort to restore stability to the Solomon Islands after it had become racked by ethnic tensions and civil unrest. Here Captain Rachel Leal, 1st Intelligence Battalion, visits villagers of north Malaita on 5 November 2003. This area had suffered from the activities of the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF), one of several violent militant groups. As part of the arms amnesty organised by RAMSI during August 2003, the MEF agreed to surrender its weapons.
Stephen Dupont was the first official Australian photographer appointed to cover a peacekeeping mission. In October 2003, under an Australian War Memorial commission, Stephen Dupont travelled to Solomon Islands to document the activities of RAMSI. He had been a commercial photographer before becoming a photojournalist in the late 1980s. In 1989 he travelled to Cambodia with fellow Australian photojournalist Ben Bohane to document the Vietnamese withdrawal from that country. He also covered conflicts in Sri Lanka (1990), Angola and Somalia (1993), and Rwanda (1994).