Violence Against Women

PNG’s latest Demographic and Health Survey (2016-2018) found that 56% of women aged 15-49 have experienced physical violence, and 28% have experienced sexual violence. This rate combines violence by intimate partners and others (“non-partners”). A staggering 18% of women experienced violence during pregnancy. Sixty-three percent of married women have experienced spousal physical, sexual, or emotional violence. Among the women who reported any form of physical and/or sexual violence, and who sought help from anyone (about 1/3 of abused women), only five per cent sought help from the police, five per cent from medical services and just three per cent from social services.

More information on the characteristics of intimate partner violence is available from in-depth studies that have been conducted in diverse regions of the country. For example, in 2013, Partners for Prevention led a UN-led multi-country study on Family Health and Safety Study: Bougainville which looked at men’s use of violence found that 80% of men interviewed in Bougainville reported perpetrating physical and/or sexual partner violence in their lifetime. Among a sample of women included in the same study, 69% reported having experienced physical and/or sexual violence by a partner in their lifetime, and 33% experienced intimate partner violence during the previous 12 months.

The costs of violence are not only seen at a household and community level, but also affect the economy. A recent study carried out with a number of Papua New Guinean firms found that the impact of family and sexual violence resulted in the loss of 11 days on average for every staff member every year, with a cost to those businesses of between two and nine per cent of their payroll.

Violence is associated with male authority over female behavior inspired by a range of social, cultural, and religious factors. These factors include the notion that decision-making in the home is a man’s prerogative; that gender roles are rigid and distinct and that women are owned by their partners through a bride price.

Sorcery accusation related violence

Sorcery accusation-related violence appears to be on the rise in PNG, where both the number of incidents, as well as the brutality of the violence, has increased in recent years. Increasingly, it appears to be targeting older women, and to be linked to intimate partner violence/domestic violence. Individuals accused of sorcery or witchcraft are subject to interrogation, torture or murder in ‘payback’ for harm they are thought to have perpetrated. Triggers are often related to an unexplained illness (including HIV and AIDS), death, or land grabbing. Violent methods can include: beating, breaking bones, burning with hot metal, rape, hanging over fire, cutting body parts slowly, and amputation. If death does not result, the victim may be killed. From the period 2000 to 2006, 75 cases of this violence were reported in local newspapers, with 147 victims. These figures, however, likely under-represent the true number of cases, because sorcery accusation-related violence is rarely reported to appropriate authorities or to the media.

Survivors of sorcery accusation-related violence are often not able to return to their villages and require extensive medical attention or lengthy legal proceedings before they can be relocated with their children to another village. Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Oxfam, the Tribal Foundation, the Meri Seif Haus and grassroots women’s human rights defenders, such as the Kafe Urban Women’s Settlers Association, KUP Women for Peace, and Voices for Change, provide life- saving services for survivors of sorcery accusation-related violence, including shelter, medical and legal services, rehabilitation and relocation.

Violence Against Boys and Girls

The level of trauma from violence in childhood amongst both boys and girls is also rampant. After this early exposure to family violence, as they grow up to become men and women, the possibility of leading a violent-free life is unlikely. Those who witness their parents’ abuse are 3 times more likely to be abused or become abusers; and 70% of the men in PNG have witnessed their fathers beat their mothers.

Violence against children in PNG is very widespread. Although comprehensive data are scarce, researches and studies show that 75 per cent of children experience some form of violence during their childhood, often perpetrated within the home or school environment; 43 per cent of women aged 15 to 19 years have experienced physical and/or sexual violence; nearly one third of women aged 20-24 years reported marriage by age 18 in PNG (DHS 2016-18), and 14% adolescent girls (15-19 years) have experienced sexual violence and coercion.

Violence against children has lifelong impacts on health and well-being of children, families, communities, and nations. Not only violence can result in death or severe injuries; but also, exposure to violence at an early age can impair brain development and damage other parts of the nervous system, with lifelong consequences. As such, violence against children can negatively affect cognitive development and results in educational and vocational under-achievement, thereby affecting development outcome of a community and of the society at large. Children exposed to violence and other adversities are substantially more likely to smoke, misuse alcohol and drugs, and engage in high-risk sexual behavior as adults. They also have higher rates of anxiety, depression, other mental health problems and suicide.

Violence also leads to unintended pregnancies, induced abortions, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Children exposed to violence and other adversities are more likely to drop out of school, have difficulty finding and keeping a job, and are at heightened risk for later victimization and/or perpetration of interpersonal and self-directed violence, by which violence against children can affect the next generation, bearing a financial burden for the health, education and social welfare system of the country.