An Epidemic of Gender-Based Violence in Papua New Guinea

Written by Bianca Curtin

There is an epidemic sweeping the nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG) — and it’s not COVID-19. Gender-based violence (GBV) has rapidly been on the rise in PNG across the past few decades, now reaching proportions wherein the nation is among the world’s most dangerous places to exist as a woman or girl.

The statistics speak for themselves: in Papua New Guinea…

• A woman is beaten every thirty seconds
• Over 1.5 million experience GBV annually
• Forty-one percent of men admit to having committed rape
• More than two-thirds of women and girls between ages fifteen and forty-nine suffer physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime — nearly twice that of the global average

Whatsmore, data analysts suggest that GBV is likely under-reported in the region, given that the overwhelming majority of survivors who seek assistance do so through informal channels, predominantly in familial and village networks.

This past May, a three-day parliamentary inquiry was conducted to investigate the status of gender-based violence in PNG, which was said to have become more rampant following the COVID-19 pandemic. It found that the nation was severely lacking in terms of resources and policy coordination combative of GBV, especially once compared to the staggering quantity of such cases. In 2020 alone, about 15,500 domestic violence cases were reported — yet merely 250 individuals were prosecuted, less than half of whom were ever convicted.

The inquiry’s committee members thus compiled and issued a seventy-one item list of recommendations to the parliament of Papua New Guinea, including suggestions to increase funding for counseling services, implement widespread reproductive health services, and follow through with the federal action plan to counter alleged sorcery-related violence. They also convened with international development partners so as to establish partnerships against GBV.

(Source: United Nations)

In September, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, James Marape, claimed that his administration was moving towards implementation of the reports recommendations — however, any federal records or plans pertaining to this has yet to be revealed.

As of now, one of the most pressing issues in Guam is lack of affordable housing. An increasing number of people are finding themselves unable to afford houses on the island due to rapidly rising prices over the past couple of years. The prices continue to rise due to a number of things, but they’re all related to low supply and increasing demand. First of all, building houses on Guam is expensive. The island is quite small, and there isn’t very much developed land. When a house is built, materials have to be imported from overseas, which can be very expensive. Additionally, construction workers are oftentimes hired from off of Guam. However, construction projects for the military bases on Guam pay more than building houses, so there are less construction workers available for housing projects. Another contributor to rising prices is that the housing market on Guam caters to military members. The US military has a large presence on Guam, and military members can often afford to pay more than Guamanians for housing on Guam. Between their board and housing stipend and their access to VA loans, Guamanians can’t compete for housing. This is leading to many people from Guam leaving the island so they can afford to live.

“A Slow Genocide” of the West Papuan People

Written by Bianca Curtin

In 1969, the United Nations made the ultra controversial decision to sanction Indonesian annexation of New Guinea’s western half, West Guinea, following a mandated plebiscite conducted by Indonesian forces, which has been widely recognized for its intentionally undemocratic nature. Six years prior, Indonesia invaded West Papua — merely two years after the nation was officially declared independent. In the decades since, separatists of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) have maintained insurgent operations at a relatively subtle level, due to Indonesia’s criminalization of independence advocacy and legal classification of separatists as terrorists. For an individual to so much as fly the West Papuan Morning Star flag can incur them a prison sentence of up to fifteen years. The chief demand of OPM activists: a fair referendum, in which all West Papuans would be granted to freedom to vote for or against their independence as a nation.

Since the annexation in 1969, upwards of 100,000 indigenous peoples have been killed, by means of homicide, violence, starvation, and disease — though estimates place the true number much closer to half a million. The West Papuan population has thus experienced almost zero population growth since the early seventies, as compared to Papua New Guinea, that has grown over five-fold in the same duration. This violent oppression has coincided with Indonesia’s efforts to replicate the euro-colonial structures of previous occupations in the territory. Via copious financial incentives, authorities have drawn hundreds of thousands of Indonesian migrants to West Papua, diluting the already diminished Native population in such a way that places them as minorities in their own nation. Today, about 50% of the region’s population is composed of non-indigenous peoples, most of whom are Indonesian. This has been coupled with vehement efforts to replace Christianity with Islam as the dominant religion of the land, yet another means of advancing the erosion of West Papuan culture. Forced migration of tribal peoples from their highland settlements to coastal areas has also furthered Indonesia’s imperialist regime, wherein authorities are more able to control Native populations, through both rampant policing and malaria outbreaks. These aspects have collectively served as a “slow genocide” of West Papuan peoples.

Eurocentrist Colonialism in Papua New Guinea

Written by Bianca Curtin

The history of colonization in Papua New Guinea is one ripe with eurocentrism and western-based ethnocentrism, as has typically been true of colonial efforts in foreign nations. This history substantially took root in the nineteenth century, as Dutch colonists conducted trade throughout the Pacific archipelago. Slave trade was particularly prominent during this time, with over 20,000 indigenous peoples forcibly transported to locations such as Fiji and Australia’s Queensland through the year 1884. In 1889, Germany and Great Britain settled to annex the region between them, the former acquiring New Guinea as a colony and the latter declaring Papua a British Protectorate. Britain would go on to transfer rule of the territory to the newly federated nation of Australia in 1906, who would later invade German New Guinea amidst the events of World War I. It was not until 1945 that the nation assumed total control of both regions, and another four years before they united, thus becoming what we now know as Papua New Guinea. Australia’s administrative activity in the territories was, however, impaired by their systemic eurocentrism. Their ignorance in terms of the distinct cultural, natural, and socio-structural fortitude of both New Guinea and Papua produced little to no economic development.

Papuans began to demand independence in the wake of World War II, though the might of this movement was weakened by the PNGs century-long political and economic stagnation under euro-colonial rule. With a population wherein the majority was illiterate and most citizens engaged in low income occupations, nominally subsistence farming, Papuans from all over experienced little to no interaction with public officials, or government in general. Thus, feelings of nationhood and ethnocentrism were scarcely prominent, thereby mitigating the strength of pro-independence advocacy. Nonetheless, such efforts gained significant traction in the early 1970s following a sharp rise in unemployment and subsequent mass riots, self governance finally being accomplished in 1973. Papua New Guinea’s first prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, would establish the nation’s first independent government shortly thereafter in 1975 — this enormous shift fostering the beginnings of ethnocentrism among Papuans for years to come.

Biodiversity and Ethnolinguistic Attrition in Papua New Guinea

Written by Bianca Curtin

Papua New Guinea is at present the most linguistically diverse nation worldwide, boasting about 840 living languages that belong to at least 33 family classifications. However, this astounding diversity is currently under threat, with over 32% of the lands’ indigenous dialects declared to be endangered. Whereas previously multilingualism thrived in the region’s lack of an official dialect, now the nation has instituted a dominant lingua franca, the English-based creole Tok Pisin, and established English as its formal education language, thereby contributing to the rapid deterioration of such diversity. A research project published in 2021 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in the United States (PNAS) found that only 57.7% of surveyed secondary-school students were fluent in an indigenous dialect, compared to 90.8% of students’ parents. Conductors of the study suggest that this language attrition is the “result of economic and social development of a country undergoing globalization,” most notably affected by rising rates of urbanization as well as population growth.

(Pictured: PNAS survey data on PNG language and ethno-biological knowledge decline)

Papua New Guinea is also highly diverse in terms of biodiversity, estimated to have upwards of 200,000 species of fauna and flora, about half of which still are yet to be named. Forest estate occupies about 71% of the nation’s total land area, including the world’s third largest tropical rainforest, preceded only by the Amazon and the Congo Basin. Yet, studies show that, at present, approximately 15% of PNGs rainforest estate is degraded, being lost at an annual rate of 1.4%. The Wildlife Conservation Society Newsroom reports that in the past three decades, a quarter of the nation’s rainforests have been destroyed. This inevitably has led to an alarming decline in terms of regional biodiversity, further threatened by lack of regulation, industrialization and infrastructural projects, as well as pollution. The industry sector is especially prominent in this respect, developing with increasing acceleration to accommodate mining, oil, forestry, and fishery activity, as well as production of prominent resources, namely timber and palm oil. Construction of an enormous new road system, the Trans-Papua Highway, is predicted to contribute to this acceleration.

(Pictured: construction of the PNGs new Trans-Papua Highway)

Papua New Guinea’s diverse geographic landscapes, especially its mountainous terrain, have provided the region with the ideal conditions for its linguistic breadth and species-richness. The region’s native populations have developed immense bio-cultural knowledge systems, having learned to use resources from local ecosystems overtime. However, this too is under threat. A mere one-in-five Papuan ethnolinguistic groups have any documentation of their bio-cultural knowledge, only 2.5% of whom maintain detailed records on such practices. It seems that in order to preserve the immense diversity of Papua New Guinea, environmental and ethnolinguistic conservation efforts must act in tandem to combat the negative impacts of urbanization and heightened industrial activity.

Genocide is a form of massacre to a grand number of people for political, economic, or social beliefs. When discussing the history of genocide in the world, you can see that whenever there has been a genocide that has taken place, the rules of war have been violated. One example is the Holocaust during World War 2 when the Axis powers and the Allies were fighting each other. Not only was Germany killing actual military soldiers, but they were killing actual civilians that were not trying to interfere with the war, and that went against the Geneva convention which says that you can’t kill civilians that are in areas of conflict. This is just one of the many occurrences that have shown that there is a lack of control of the rules of war during a conflict. Not only does this show that war can be an unfair battle between parties and their people, but it also supports claims that conflict and disagreements should be dealt with by other means. One way or another, mass killings of a people should be banned and if the event of a genocide happens, the oppressors should be handed firm consequences for the harm they caused to the people and the environment around the incident.

Ethnocentrism in Guam
By Brandon Dawson

Ethnocentrism is viewing people’s actions or beliefs through one’s own cultural lens instead of using the other people’s culture as a frame of reference. Guam’s treatment has been greatly influenced by ethnocentrism, especially in the early 20th century. In the early 1900s, a series of Supreme Court cases known as the “Insular Cases”, in which the court held that the rights given to American citizens in the Constitution applied only to people in what the court called “incorporated territories”. People in other territories, called “unincorporated”, were given less rights. The Court ruled that American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands were all unincorporated territories. These territories were deemed unincorporated in Downes v. Bidwell due in part to the fact that they were inhabited by “alien races” for whom the “administration of government and justice according to Anglo-Saxon principles may for a time be impossible.” This treatment continues to this day, over 100 years later. Residents of unincorporated territories don’t have the same rights as those living in one of the 50 states. Those in American Samoa aren’t even granted American citizenship. People living in unincorporated territories can’t vote in general elections, don’t have a voting representative in congress, and are barred from some federal social programs, such as SSI and certain Medicare subsidies. As recently as April of 2022, the Supreme Court affirmed in United States v. Vaello-Madero that the 5th amendment’s due process clause and the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause do not ensure that residents of unincorporated territories can be eligible for federal aid. Residents of Guam, as well as all other unincorporated territories of the United States are still treated worse than their counterparts on the mainland due to their cultural values and practices being viewed through the ethnocentric lens of early 19th century American imperialists following the Spanish-American war.

Currently in the Solomon Islands, Australia is financially aiding them to make an attempt to prevent climate change from damaging themselves and the world. Though the Solomon Islands have been facing some challenges with COVID-19 and concerns with the United States and Australia, due to the security pact made with some pacific islands and China, this issue is major because the Solomon Islands are losing land rapidly. Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said that Australia is raising the total budget for development overseas by almost 900 million US dollars, and almost 600 million of that budget is going to the Pacific areas. Wong stated, “this additional assistance will directly support action in the region to strengthen climate resilience, including on climate science and renewable energy.” Her actions in attempt to stop climate change isn’t just for the Solomon Islands. Her motives in this is to also to make “major step towards the goal of making Australia stronger and more influential in the world.” These major actions that the Foreign Minister is making is a crucial step in positively changing the world because the threat of climate change is so severe, it can reshape the world completely if not delt with through direct action.

Al Jazeera. “Australia promises millions in climate, security aid for Pacific.” Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/21/australia-promises-millions-in-security-aid-for-solomon-islands

Endangered Language on Guam
By: Brandon Dawson

An endangered culture is a culture than may face extinction due to key figures in a small cultural population, such as elders, dying off. An endangered language is a language that is not being taught to younger generations, and as such may face extinction. Guam, the largest of the Mariana Islands, is home to the Chamorro people. Being tens of thousands strong, they don’t face cultural extinction, but the language Chamorro is identified as an endangered language. While there are still nearly 38,000 native speakers of Chamorro, it is common for people to favor English over Chamorro due to a now defunct policy passed over 100 years ago. Naval Government Executive General Order No. 243, made in 1917, made English the official language of Guam, and banned speaking Chamorro. In the past century, a lot of work has been done to reverse the damage done by the naval administration. In 2013, a law was passed in Guam to increase the number of people taught Chamorro in school, and Chamorro immersion schools have been made which teach both Chamorro language and culture. Governor Torres of Guam has said “I know, it’s easier said than done. But my children speak Chamorro, because all we speak at home is our language. I give them love and respect in Chamorro. Children can speak English at school and with their friends, but they must learn Chamorro at home. Chamorro must start at home. Chamorro education is a plus, but it shouldn’t be the only tool for us to know our language.” However, many older people don’t speak Chamorro due to the old laws, so they couldn’t teach their children, so educational programs prove very important.

Endangered cultures are cultures that are close to being extinct due to the lack of involvement of the cultural traditions and the lack of the language being spoken from the culture. Wade Davis’s TED Talk “Dreams From Endangered Cultures” shines light on this issue. His standpoint is that since people have not been partaking in the cultural traditions and speak the languages that they hold, cultures have been dying off at fast rates. I agree with this because people during these times are not as interested in keeping cultural customs and languages alive as their elders and ancestors were and a lot of cultures have become extinct as a result of that. Another reason for some cultures and languages’ extinction is that a change of culture has happened, and the old traditions are left in history. An example of this is the language Tanema. This language is of the Solomon Islander’s culture and is spoken by only one person on the Vanikoro Island. The reason for this is because the Solomon Islands stopped using Tanema and declared Teanu as their main language. Not only did this change stop the language from being taught to people, but this also stopped the culture surrounding it. Even though the language and culture of Tanema is almost extinct because of this, nothing else has been left or lost.