I was lucky to make a couple of reporting trips back to PNG in 2022. One visit coincided with the 2022 election & produced a couple of pieces for The Guardian about women candidates and the push for women’s representation. I came back with lots of thoughts swirling on a decade of conversations on women … Continue reading
Belatedly catching up posting some of my recent work. This was the second report I filed for The Guardian during a reporting trip to PNG during the 2022 election. I was excited and gratified to be able to interview both the successful women – the new Central Governor Rufina Peter and MP for Rai Coast … Continue reading
It was great to get back on the road reporting in July, and even better to be in Papua New Guinea after three years absence. Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote a long reportage piece for Griffith Review on the push for female representation, and the formidable obstacles female candidates face. Then, there were three … Continue reading
Revisiting Tari, albeit long distance, for The Guardian. Recent killings of women and children in a village outside Tari deserve to be seen in the context of the spiralling social emergency playing out there. This plugs into the same issues wrote about in my long feature on PNG’s Resource Curse for The Monthly last year. … Continue reading
ANU’s Dr Nicole Haley has been closely observing and analysing national elections in PNG for the past three polls. Her soon-to-be published findings on last year’s election provide shattering reading. I filed this news story for The Guardian out of her presentation to the ANU State of the Pacific Conference. Those interested can find a link … Continue reading
Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world, with studies indicating that one in two children is chronically stunted, a condition from which they can never recover. The reasons are complex. It’s rarely a question of hunger, rather a lack of critical nutrients in the first 1000 days … Continue reading
About 10 years ago, when I started writing about PNG and women, I got an encouraging email out of the blue from one Elizabeth Reid. I confess, I had to google her – only one of the most mighty (and modest) feminist wayfinders of the ’70s and beyond. She was Gough’s “supergirl” but has been … Continue reading
This week on ABC Radio National I have a story up on the documentary program Earshot that I’ve long wanted to tell. It’s about how Maria von Trapp – yes, as in How-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-Maria/The Sound of Music – washed up on a PNG island with several of her singing tribe; how her stepdaughter (she was called … Continue reading
A confronting story from Bougainville, PNG, where I have often reported on the crisis of maternal deaths (second highest in the Asia Pacific after Afghanistan). The news angle here the landmark case around the jailing of a couple for the termination of a pregnancy. But the background context is about the tragedy deaths in childbirth, … Continue reading
A different take on Mother’s Day: In Papua New Guinea, where maternal deaths are amongst the highest in the world, 44 per cent of women of fertile age and in a relationship report an “unmet need” for contraception. That means they have little if any capacity to space, delay or stop having babies. My story for … Continue reading
Notebook & Narrative by Jo Chandler 