Comments

PNG is not alone in trying to come to grips with this sort of crime. An important issue is one of understanding the origins of why it happens and the perspective of those who are committing the crime. It reminds me of the report on an habitual thief who became absolutely livid when his own house was broken into and many of his own items stolen or destroyed. He couldn’t see the trail of heartache and sorrow he had left behind himself but could only focus on how indignant he alone felt. Would the husbands, fathers, brothers of the victims be prepared to act against those who break the law before they themselves were personally affected and aggrieved? The buck has to stop somewhere. The disruption of village family life and the dysfunctional metropolitan existence, where those who are either under employed or unemployed is a potential breeding ground for all sorts of social problems. Where the previous community constraints of the village are now either non-existent or weak, the efforts of those few who are trying to help the victims and potential victims are often quickly ameliorated. The essence of the issue is to look above the forest instead of trying to continually trip over the fallen trees. No government, public body or leader seems to be prepared to do this as they know they will instantly become bogged down in human emotions and issues of out of control hormones. It seems like everyone has a strong, reactive view of how to combat crimes against women after it happens but no one wants to be the first to be proactive and confront the main reasons behind it? Until enough people get together and start thinking holistically about this issue, nothing much will change. The metropolitan gender imbalance in PNG, ephemeral community values and controls often due to mixed cultural backgrounds and loyalties and an under-funded law enforcement service clearly aren’t helping but only exacerbating what is a common, underlying problem not just peculiar to PNG. Unfortunately, no political or community leader apparently wants to be the first to examine these issues in any detail.

Jonathan and Stephen, To explain the governance program in Myanmar: a $20 million program would be a medium sized program in Myanmar. Large programs (in health and education) are in the order of $60-80 million. Chris Elstoft Port Vila

Thanks Jorge. The benefit of the item-count technique is that it provides a degree of anonymity. In cases where survey anonymity is guaranteed (i.e. an anonymous internet survey with high response rates), then literature shows there is no significant difference in answers sourced from the item-count technique or direct questioning (see <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21307031" rel="nofollow">here</a>). In instances where the survey is not anonymous (say direct questions related to sexual violence in the recent PNG HIES) then there is likely to be a difference between these answers and those sourced from the item-count technique approach. The item-count technique can be used for your stated purpose however large sample sizes are required for statistical significance - which is a disadvantage. Kosuke Imai from Princeton University provides a nice (albeit at times technical) <a href="http://imai.princeton.edu/research/listP.html" rel="nofollow">summary of the advantages and disadvantages</a> of this approach.

Governments reaching 0.7% may easily fall victim to not just loss of political support but also forgetting that aid is about effectiveness and quality and not a silver bullet for development. Being fixated on a development proportion would mean over looking this. See<a href="http://ipeanddevelopment.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/0-7-0-07-7-the-lure-and-wonder-over-how-much-aid-countries-should-give/" rel="nofollow"> this post</a> for more.

Hi, interesting post, especially the Item count technique, I don't know if this technique can be used for victimization surveys and domestic violence surveys, specially violence against the women, if that is the case, what would be the advantages of disadvantages of their use? Thanks

Thanks Stephen and Kamalini for a somewhat disturbing, but enlightening blog. In the end the only thing that can make the PNG criminal justice system function in respect of holding sexual violence offenders to account is the collective will of millions of PNG's fathers and husbands and brothers, standing alongside their women. It would seem then that the issue is partly, or mostly, normative, and it's heartening that you've identified that there are brave people and organisations who are standing up to this scourge. It seems clear that resources are well spent supporting the efforts of these change-makers in PNG, because this is the source of the energy that will turn around for good criminal impunity to sexual violence. ‘Of the three sources of power the most important for sovereignty is the power over the thoughts that give trust. Violence can only be used negatively; money can only be used in two dimensions, giving and taking away. But knowledge and thoughts can transform things, move mountains and make ephemeral power appear permanent’ (Mulgan 2007).

I found this analysis very useful. It's important for those of us in the IDA beneficiary countries to not be overly optimistic. The IDA members should nevertheless be proud of what they have achieved, and we are prepared to assist in conveying the fundraising message in whatever way it might help.

Thanks for this post and comments so far, this is indeed a very important issue and as has been highlighted further research will be needed. I would raise a couple of points which are intended to amplify the issues rather than counter anything that is here. The first is that prosecution is a function of the state not the victim. In relation to criminal offences the state takes prosecutorial action (on behalf of society as a whole), with the victim being a witness for the prosecution. In cases of sexual violence prosecutors encounter the difficulty of the main witness often being unwilling to testify in court for a whole host of reasons (family/community pressure, reluctance to face the attacker, lack of appropriate court facilities to account for special circumstances, e.g where the victim is a child). Some jursidictions have sought to mitigate this by providing dedicated witness support workers (expensive) or instigating a no-drop policy within prosecution offices (can result in victims being designated as hostile witnesses by virtue of the adversarial system used by courts in common law countries). Another more pragmatic response (not examined here and possibly not applicable but it would be good to know) is for prosecutors to negotiate a guilty plea to a lesser charge to save the victim having to testify. The figures here are illustrative but it would be good to see how they compare with other PNG centres and/or other countries. There is a wider issue around the political economy of law, justice and policing which I will mention briefly here (and hopefully expand upon later): there are no votes in these things as they tend to be issues that would normally be part of a national rather than a local conversation. Whenever we talk about 'service delivery' or the lack thereof in rural PNG or elsewhere we talk about health, education and infrastructure but the concept of 'law and justice' as a service is not entrenched on either the supply or demand side.

Stephen and Kamalini - thanks for this informative blog. It provides some hard facts on the sad state of sexual violence in Lae city. The real heroes, as you rightly point out, are the members of the public plus the NGOs such as MSF who provide care and support to the victims. Your data shows the pathetic rates of conviction, but what you miss is the fact that a large number, something like half when I last looked at the statistics, of those sent to jail escape confinement. May be it is time the people of PNG stood up to crime. The Indians have shown us that this can be done.

Stephen, Kamalini Such an important conversation to bring to light, though always such a shame that violence continues. As a White Ribbon Ambassador, standing up for the ending of violence against women, we need to maintain the conversation, the advocacy and work together, men and women, to effect change such that violence against women is never excused or ignored - let alone committed. Mel Dunn

Thanks Grant. Your article raises some very challenging queries. Maybe some of the questions that should also be asked are: Is the current education system in PNG providing the education the majority of school leavers need to gain the employment they wish? Are the employment opportunities on offer dovetailed into the education system? The majority of PNG people are still subsistence farmers. While the demographics are changing, they aren't keeping pace with the huge 'youth bulge' that is catapulting large numbers of graduating students into a very limited job market. The only alternatives are to return to the village and start gardening or become one of the urban 'underemployed'. Clearly these options don't appeal to many who then quite reasonably ask: 'Why did we attend school only to have no use for much of what we learnt?' The PNG PM has recently asked PNG graduates to stay in the country and help develop their own nation. The LNG project was held up as the 'great new hope' for absorbing unemployed skilled workers yet will this happen to the extent where there will be full employment? There are reports that some of those who gain employment must then be retrained in the skills required. For those who do gain employment, are the jobs where they live or must they travel to where the employment opportunities are and then worrying about accommodation, living expenses and their ethnicity? Fixing primary school education woes is only part of the holistic problem. Someone at senior government level must take a helicopter view of the whole education/employment situation in PNG and urgently address the detailed planning for tomorrow's students while coping with today's underemployed. Maybe that's just some of the reasons why the 'community engagement in local schools' is reportedly falling off? Many others may well involve the age old local problems of resource management and effective governance.

Wesley, Apologies for this delayed reply, and thanks for your useful account of past attempts to forge certain forms of bloc identity among small states, particularly small island developing states (SIDS). You are right that such attempts have never really succeeded, and have not been pursued very vigorously in recent years. The idea of a special, formal UN category of SIDS, analogous to the category of Least-Developed Countries (LDCs), came up again in 2010, when Maldives sought support for a General Assembly resolution on this point. This was in the context of (wait for it) the <a href="http://www.sidsnet.org/msi_5/index.shtml" rel="nofollow">five-year review of the Mauritius Strategy for Implementation</a> of the Barbados Programme of Action. There was little support outside the AOSIS grouping, though Australia's then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd, expressed general interest in the idea in one open forum. The paucity of support is in part explained by the fact that non-SIDS LDCs fear the dilution of any preferences they might enjoy by virtue of their LDC status, though in reality such preferences are not very significant. Another factor is the technical difficulty of defining any notion of vulnerability that is really unique to small states. It seems unlikely at this point that there will ever be general agreement on a criteria-based definition of "small and vulnerable states" for the purpose of conferring privileged and automatic access to resources or preferences. In that sense, and also because the primary focus was not on access to resources or preferences, the event in Dili probably cannot be said to have reinvigorated earlier discussions on small state identity. An alternative way to look at it is to see the relatively new g7+ group as similar in nature to the AOSIS group—a club of countries with broadly similar characteristics that band together to pursue common goals. The significance of the Dili conference, as I saw it, was that it created an initial connection between the g7+ group and an important subgroup of SIDS, such that each group now has a clearer appreciation of the other's particular interests and concerns, and both groups have identified a core set of common interests. The conference might have helped to form a coalition, if not a category. Robin