By 
Stella Lira
A Person With Bruised Lips by Mart Production via Pexels, 2021/April 29th
Incidents of gender-based violence (GBV) grapple women and girls in Papua New Guinea as incidents loom at an alarming rate, increasing calls for further government action to confront this predicament.
On March 18th, the Governor of the National Capital District and Chairman of the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, Powes Parkop, underscored in his statement to the Special Parliamentary Session on the status of women and girls, the worrying rise of GBV in Papua New Guinea that is amounting to “pandemic proportions”. Despite over K26 million of funds since 2021 and K9 million this year allotted to counter GBV, it remains a persistent problem. Many of these occurrences are still unreported, which leaves countless people to suffer in silence.
Heinous cases of brutality against women involving murder, rape, kidnapping, abuse, and torture continue to disturb Papua New Guinea. The latest national survey unveiled that there is a surge of 3.4 million women and girls who are victims of different forms of violence. While a National Strategy to Respond to and End Gender-Based Violence (2016-2025) was introduced by the National Executive Council to address this issue, the situation is not improving and is magnified by increasing atrocities. Parkop determined several reasons for the lack of progress as he pointed out that offenders do not usually get convicted of their crimes, there is a shortfall in ownership by the government to execute the National Strategy effectively, and the general attitude and perception of men.
There is an entrenched societal inequality that persists in marginalising women and girls, subjecting them to GBV. More transformative interventions are necessary to change public behaviour and disentangle the root cause of the prejudice. It is a matter of urgency to include women’s vulnerabilities in state measures to empower them and to strengthen the justice system in conducting proper investigations and criminalising offenders.
Sources and Further Readings
NBC PNG. (2025, March 20). Gender-Based Violence costs PNG Billions. NBC PNG. 26 March 2025. https://www.nbc.com.pg/post/18690/gender-based-violence-costs-png-billions
POSTCOURIERONLINE. (2025, March 18). Gender-Based Violence crisis grips PNG. Post Courier. 26 March 2025. https://www.postcourier.com.pg/gender-based-violence-crisis-grips-png/
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