Papua New Guinea: A tough place to be a woman

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW | CNN

PORT MORESBY - You don't have to spend a long time on the fringes of Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, to realise that many of the roads lead to a place where luck seems to have run out.

In an urban slum called Eight Mile, women are relegated to decrepit shacks, caring for their children, who are fighting off a range of illnesses from malaria and dengue fever to skin rashes.

Last month, former finance minister James Marape was sworn in as the new prime minister on the promise of transforming the country into "the richest, black, Christian nation on the planet."

But chances are that it will take some time before the women and children of Eight Mile and across much of this South Pacific nation of eight million see any tangible improvements in their livelihoods.

Despite advances achieved elsewhere in the empowerment of women and the reduction of gender-based violence, as Human Rights Watch put it in a 2016 report, "Papua New Guinea is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, with the majority of women experiencing rape or assault in their lifetime and women facing systemic discrimination."

Even though legislation preventing violence against women and children has been on the books since 2013, many women can only find protection from abusive spouses and other perpetrators in a handful of underfunded shelters.

Under Marape, the aspiring "richest" and "Christian" nation needs to take immediate action to guarantee the protection of its female citizens.

But he can't do it alone. World leaders — including my own self-avowed feminist prime minister, Justin Trudeau — who gathered there last November for the 26th APEC Economic Leaders Meeting, squandered an opportunity to shine light on the shameful situation.

Instead, the group of mostly male leaders squabbled over the parameters of a digital future, with scarcely a word mentioned in the final statement about women. I wonder if the leaders even noticed that there's not a single woman in Papua New Guinea's parliament, and that it has just a few female mayors.

Had the APEC leaders travelled beyond Port Moresby, they very likely would have detected a seething undercurrent of violence against women.

In the highlands — parts of which are still recovering from an earthquake in February 2018 and are inaccessible to outsiders — hundreds of women and children have been caught up in the chronic tribal conflict that has gripped the regions for decades.

Even within the walls of their own homes, where they are meant to be safest, women routinely face partner violence. According to Human Rights Watch, more than two-thirds of women in the country have experienced gender-based violence.

During a recent month-long, fact-finding visit to the country, partially supported by UNICEF, I was shaken to the core as what's been portrayed in countless reports and studies was recounted to me in tearful interviews with a wide range of female victims.

Many are too horrific or graphic to repeat but have a common thread: the violence was perpetrated by their husbands, involves barbaric acts and are done repeatedly. Fearful of ending up on the street — or, even worse, dead — many only leave when the physical pain and mental anguish is too much to endure.

At a women's shelter in the coastal town of Wewak, I heard from three married women in their early twenties who alleged that they were severely beaten by their husbands, including one who said she had her left arm almost hacked off when her husband chased her with a knife.

But that's not the worst of it. In the isolated highlands, parts of which are no-go areas due to sporadic tribal violence, some of the stories I heard border on extreme brutality. It is a region where sorcery and ancient traditions conspire to create a dangerous situation for women.

Sister Lorena Jenal, a Catholic nun and counsellor in the Archdiocese of Mendi, attribute the growing trend in violence against women to the breakdown in traditional tribal authority that used to mediate disagreements peacefully.

Add to that the availability of drugs and homemade alcohol for men — many women told me they are beaten when their spouses come home under the influence — and the situation appears extremely bleak.

Furthermore, in a country where more than 80% of the population lives in rural areas, widespread illiteracy and isolation means that many victims of violence are unaware or their rights and have little access to a functioning justice system. Reaching a police station or one of the few crisis centres for women can be expensive and involve impossibly long journeys.

Mark Palm, the US-born CEO and co-founder of Samaritan Aviation, knows the lay of the land in and around Wewak almost better than anyone else. He told me that he is frequently summoned to airlift women who have been victims of domestic abuse along the Sepik River basin where his seaplanes run medical missions.

Ironically, his 1,000th flight in March happened to be an emergency flight to rescue a woman who'd been badly beaten, allegedly by her husband.

"We see all kinds of domestic abuse cases. The worst is when I pick up a woman with severed arms, and those who have been cut in the head, back and legs. The look in their eyes of defeat and resignation always cuts me to the core," he said to me.

Though there have been some laudable pieces of legislation and policies enacted on the national level — such as acts to protect families and children and a national strategy for the prevention of gender-based violence — it is hard to measure the benefit for women as enforcement and implementation tends to be lax.

In many of the countries in the developing world where I've worked in the aid business, countries with a high percentage of females in parliament or cabinet often translates into a trend for more child and family-friendly legislation.

That's why there's reason for some hope in Papua New Guinea.

Shortly before I departed, on International Women's Day in March, former prime minister Peter O'Neill proposed a women's parliamentary quota system for its 111-seat legislature.

The system is similar to what I've seen used in patriarchal societies like Bangladesh, where 50 of the 350 parliamentary seats are reserved for women.

And earlier this month, Papua New Guinea's police minister Bryan Kramer promised "sweeping changes" to how police address sexual violence and police brutality.

But that will not be enough, at least in the short-term, to assist the countless victims of violence.

First, the government needs to end impunity for perpetrators of violence. Second, major donors can play a role in funding a legal aid fund, an expansion of the network of safe houses and counselling centres for victims of abuse, since oftentimes - the Wewak shelter's founder Sophie Mangai told me - these are the only places women can escape abusive spouses.

And, third, the legislature must repair the weak judicial and law enforcement system by filling the many empty judge's seats, hiring more specially trained police and rehabilitating the penal system.

Doing nothing, quite simply, is not an option.

Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst and a former spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

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Apec report not ready

By GIDEON KINDIWA - The National

THE full report of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Leaders’ Summit last year is yet to be completed because the Finance Department has not paid outstanding payments to contractors and suppliers, says Justin Tkatchenko, who was the Apec minister then.
And the tender process for the luxury Maseratis and Bentleys parked at the Port Moresby wharf may have to be repeated because of mishandling, he said.
Tkatchenko said almost K30 million were yet to be paid to service providers, most of whom were local contractors, and the report was put on hold until payments were made.
Despite that, the now Housing and Urban Development Minister said it was time to move on and complete the report and the debts would be included as part of the report.
“Still to date there’s an outstanding that Finance (Department) is still yet to secure. It’s taking too long and we cannot procrastinate on this, we will hand in our final report which includes the outstanding payments and allow Finance to deal with it directly,” he said.
“A period of 12 months was given to the Apec Authority with consent from the State Solicitor to complete the report and we still got until November to complete the report and hand it in, but we will do it before then.”
Tkatchenko had told Parliament after the summit that the full Apec report had been delayed by the Ombudsman Commission.
“We are going through a detailed process to ensure that the full report is given on the floor of parliament on the details of the Apec outcomes and also how the Apec expenditure was expended and the final amount of money that was spent,” he had said.
“This is delayed because Moresby North West MP Sir Mekere Morauta brought to the Ombudsman Commission about the vehicles and other things that were supposedly purchased and all the rest of it.”
Then-prime minister Peter O’Neill had also told parliament then that the authority had budgeted K300millionfor the summit and not K5 billion as Sir Mekere had claimed.
Tkatchenko said the money allocated to pay service providers was budgeted in the 2018 Budget and approved by Parliament but he did not know whether the Finance Department had run short of funding or had other priorities. He said he and former Apec chief executive officer Chris Hawkins had constant meetings with the department in trying to raise the issue but the funds had not been paid yet.
He said completion of the report was only awaiting the Department of Prime Minister, NEC and Finance Department to complete their financial reports respectively.
However, the Apec Authority will submit its reports based on the records it had as the need for closure to Apec was paramount for the authority.
Tkatchenko clarified that there was a process that needed to be followed under the Apec Papua New Guinea 2018 Coordination Authority Act 2014.
“The winding up of the Apec Authority is complete when I have received its report and deemed the final report to be satisfactory. This report will then be tabled in Parliament to repeal the act,” he said.
He said the authority was into its final stages of furnishing the report, which would cover all activities and performance of the authority. The final part of the report is the audited report of financial statements prepared by a first-tier firm of auditors and accountants with an office in Port Moresby and the Auditor-General’s Audit Tender Committee was in the process of appointing an independent auditor.
In regards to the tendering of the luxury Apec vehicles, Tkatchenko said: “It is being mishandled by the Department of Finance.
“The tenders were issued wrongly. Instead of putting it out as a tender with a reserved price it was put out as an expression of interest. The whole objective of recouping the funds that we started from day one was not achieved, and so we have to go through that process again.”
Tkatchenko said the department wrongly issued the tenders as expressions of interest and so many buyers were interested but their offers were low, which meant the funds that had been spent would not be recovered.
He also clarified that according to Finance, one Maserati and one Bentley had been sold and the rest were still being prepared for sale.
Meanwhile, Finance secretary Dr Ken Ngangan told The National last night that he would have to confirm with the department before explaining the tender process of the vehicles.
He said it was a sensitive matter and he wanted the public to know what was really happening because the Apec Authority kept on saying different things, the Apec Minister a different thing and so he would come back with confirmed details today.
“The Apec Authority was in charge of running the event and Finance was in charge of paying the funds, but we have run out of money to fully cover the costs,” Ngangan said.
“But I will raise this with the Budget Management Committee and we will bring it to the Treasury (Department) for them to allocate funds to pay the service providers.”

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/apec-report-not-ready/