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
This is a modified extract of my longer Lowy analysis (see below) published by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald and featuring the photographs of my colleague Vlad Sokhin. It focuses on a single, shocking event in a village outside Wewak late last year – the rape by police of a teenage girl – … Continue reading
In this long analysis published by the Lowy Institute, I draw on recent interviews, my older notebooks, and the expert insights of PNG commentators, specialists and anthropologists to explore a range of questions around the endemic violence against women in Papua New Guinea. My principle concern is to explain to a wider readership how, and … Continue reading
(Photograph by Stuart McEvoy) ‘Women would come to me and put their heads on my shoulder or hold my hand,’ recalls Governor Julie Soso. They said ‘Julie, we need you to get in there (the Parliament), because we can’t continue to walk with our rice bag and kerosene and cooking oil and salt from that … Continue reading
