Women Across the PNG Highlands Internally Displaced by Armed
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However, PNG’s central Mt. Hagen Kundiawa Kimbe New Kiunga Umboi Goroka Kandrian Britain highlandsBougainville region, so recently opened Tari Mendi Kabwum Arawa d Nadzab Lake n Okapa Panguna SOUTHERN CHIMBU EAST NEWup to the outside world, has never Murray a Finschhafen l HIGHLANDS EASTERN Lae Buin k c HIGHLANDS WEST NEW BRITAIN i Huon experienced life under effectiveChoiseul state r t S Marawaka Gulf BRITAIN Kikori MOROBE law and justice systems. Far from WESTERN Santa F Solomon Sea ly Balimo disappearing, tribal fighting in the Ysabel Kerema Trobriand PNG Highlands has beenN rapidly and Gulf of Papua Islands ew Weam G Morehead Popondetta radically transformed with thee advent Kiwai org Tufi D'Entrecas ia Kokoda teau ofK ulumadauthe cash economy, the acceleratedGrou Daru Goodenough x Is p Fergusson la GULF nd Woodlark s exploitation of vast SOLOMONmineral, gasISLANDS Port Moresby Kwikila Torres Strait NATIONAL CAPITAL Esa'ala MILNE BAY Guadalcanal G (LNG) and oil wealth parliamentary Kupiano osc he Normanby Alotau n Louisia St democracyde and elections. Highland ra Arc CENTRAL it Misima hip ela Pocklington Reef population arego now severely affected by sporadic,Rossel but intense armed Coral Sea Tagula Armed conflict in the Highlands of PNG conflict. The rules of engagement have changed, and The boundaries and names shown and the designations used the casualties have increased. Homemadeon this map do not imply officialand endorsement high- or acceptance PapuaA USTRALIANew Guinea (PNG) achieved political powered weapons have replacedb y thetraditional United Nations. weapons. independence in 1975, almost one hundred years after Young men with arms are overruling traditional leaders. Map German,No. 4104 Rev. 1 UNITEDBritish NATIONS and colonial presence in the coastal, Department of Peacekeeping Operations January 2004 Customs which once protected women and children from Cartographic Section southern and island regions. The mountainous central harm during conflicts have fallen away. Mercenaries Highlands region of PNG embraces seven provinces, have emerged. Guns are a highly desired commodity hosts more than thirty percent of the total national and feature more significantly in a communities’ sense of population of approximately 6.5 million people and was security than police of state justice systems do. first explored only in the 1920s. The region extends from the westerly Enga and Southern Highlands provinces, Contemporary conflicts in the Highlands region are through the Western Highlands Province, a new Province no longer just about every day social and economic of Jiwaka, Simbu Province and Eastern Highlands grievances (over land, gender relations and power Province. A second new province has been established over women, and sometimes, retaliation and revenge in the region of PNGs huge Liquefied National Gas (LNG) for crimes of violence committed against women). deposits, which will be the site of PNG’s largest natural Elections and large scale resource developments are resource development for the next 20 years. In the triggering new economic and power rivalries between 1950’s a central ‘Highlands Highway’ was constructed clans. Highlands conflicts are now very much related and some more remote areas were only being opened to which tribe will benefit most from cash-based royalty up to the Australian colonial administration as recently payments from the global, large-scale corporate resource as the 1950s. developers and which tribe will benefit by getting its bloc-voted candidate elected into a seat in national The incidence and impact of ongoing tribal warfare parliament - where he will be bound to represent tribal Bride price payments: As the highlands regions transitions to a cash-based economy, there is a tendency for customs to be monetized, and women and girls to be commoditized. Buying wives (with new found and sometimes ill-gotten cash wealth) is common, and elevates male status, and at the same time dramatically diminishes the rights and power of women, and the possibilities to end escape bad and violent marriages. Bride price and polygamy combined enables men with money to ‘purchase’ and control multiple wives. Beliefs in Magic and Sorcery: Throughout Melanesia, most people believe that some people hold magical A widow from the armed conflict in the Eastern Highlands province. powers that can be used for good or ill. Spells and curses Credit: Delilah Sandeka. can be bought and sold to harm rivals, competitors and to payback or get revenge. Money, lack of basic services, interests and loyalties and control disposable cash in new diseases causing death (e.g. AIDS related deaths) the form of discretionary (or ‘slush’) funds and will have and lack of education, information, communication and more opportunities to gain advantage by advancing state protections have combined to see an escalation in deals with foreign investors and developers. These are allegations of sorcery being practiced by women (and high stakes, no longer fought with bows and arrows, but some men) to harm or kill. The result is increasingly rather with deadly, high-powered and homemade and frequent allegations and mob-killings of alleged factory-made guns. Guns are the new tools of power and sorcerers, following deaths, disease or misfortune in influence in the Highlands. They are the currency traded the community. Extra judicial pronouncements of guilt, during elections and with some unscrupulous resource leading to increasingly barbaric and often sexual mob developers. Whole populations of villagers – women and torture and frenzied killings are increasingly common men – are expected to contribute to community weapon in many parts of the Highlands. Most occur with total caches of weapons/village arsenals stockpiled in the impunity. name of community security, at a time when weak post independence policing and justice systems appear to Other contextual and societal changes be alarmingly neglected, under-resourced, and severely challenged by combatants/warriors in possession of Other contextual and societal changes compounding more sophisticated and powerful weapons than those these problems affecting day to day life and contributing available to state police and military forces. to conflict include: PNG’s HIV/AIDS epidemic: The Highlands region has Culture, custom and violence the one of the world’s highest incidences of HIV infection Studies in PNG indicate that the Highlands women and related deaths, and high rates of infection among experience the highest incidence and most severe forms women and girls. Women living with HIV suffer more of violence. This is partly related to the failure of state discrimination and neglect, and allegedly murder, than protection and justice mechanisms. It is also linked to men and when ignorance on the causes, progression and extreme manifestations of some cultural traditions that treatment of HIV&AIDS are little known or understood, discriminate against women. These include: women are often accused as sorcerers responsible for this and other more recently diagnosed conditions like the ‘custom’ of traditional male leaders Polygamy: cancer. (known as ‘big men’) being accorded rights to multiple wives, spanning many generations of women has been PNG’s Gun culture and armed conflict: Across the distorted to allow any man who assumes or is accorded highlands many men are involved in manufacture of guns, the title of bigman the right to marry and control the lives smuggling or guns, leaking police and military weapons of multiple women. and emerging young warlords lead long-distance treks to the coastal ports of Lae or Daru, or across the border Related to the practice of polygamy, is the Child Brides: to buy guns. Communities collectively aspire and tendency of powerful men to seek or be offered young contribute to the highest powered weapons and the best girls as marked brides, sometimes as young as ten years, marksmen, killers. Community members unwilling to to men who may be in their 70s, but also increasingly participate are harassed, expelled and under threat of young men who have assumed power through the barrel harm and injury must go into ‘exile’. Women and children of the gun, as hired guns (so-called ‘Rambos’) or as witness shooting and killing, and are at once reliant on, determined combatants or criminals. Armed men can but terrified by guns, which are also reportedly turned command, or may be offered young girls as brides. against them in domestic conflicts, power struggles and instances of sexual abuse, including marital rape. Police are unable to stop wars or attend to crimes because they are very often under-resourced for daily police operations, ill equipped to manage armed conflict and overwhelmed by the superior weaponry held by tribes, communities, emerging local warlords and hired guns. The state has failed to acknowledge, document, monitor or address the very visible problem of widowhood, displacement, poverty and terror experienced by thousands of women in the conflict affected regions of the Highlands. Drugs and alcohol: Marijuana cultivation is common and widespread as a cash crop in PNG.