Papua New Guinea 2018
Yearbook 2018
Papua New Guinea. Human Rights Watch reported in a January report that violence against women in Papua New Guinea has created a crisis. According to Countryaah.com, Port Moresby is the capital city of Papua New Guinea, a country located in Melanesia. The government was accused of neglecting the victims’ need for security and justice. More than two-thirds of women in Papua New Guinea have experienced domestic violence, and in some parts of the country, 80% of men have been violent to their partners.
A volcanic eruption occurred on the island of Kadovar off the north coast in January. Thousands of people were evacuated from it and neighboring islands, and the government planned to settle Kadovar residents on the mainland for a long time. Later, an outbreak occurred on the island of Manam, where a few thousand people were forced to flee their homes.
- According to Abbreviationfinder: PNG is an three letter acronym for Papua New Guinea.
In February, an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 occurred in the country’s southwest. The devastation was enormous with at least 145 dead, thousands of damaged and destroyed cities, villages, roads and telephone connections. Huge landslides followed the quake in the mountainous area, and the epicenter was so inaccessible and the road network so devastated that it took weeks before the rescue team reached some affected villages. A woman testified about seeing her husband and her seven children swept away in a landslide. The area was described as a war zone, and close to 300,000 people were in need of assistance. The government issued disaster permits.
The area was previously affected by clan battles and many people were already living in refugee camps. Long waiting for help led to new violence with deaths, looting and thefts. The government sent heavily armed police to the area. Extensive production of gas and oil is ongoing in the region and was stopped for safety reasons. Several strong aftershocks hit the area.
In June, in the town of Mendi in the highlands, protesters set fire to a passenger plane leaving the airport. Passengers and crew escaped but the plane was destroyed. Protesters ran amok when a court announced that their candidate lost a disputed governor’s election. The court and the governor’s residence were also burnt down and the death victims were demanded. Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, who is from the area, announced a state of emergency, dissolved the provincial government and sent out military.
Papua New Guinea received increasing aid and investment from China, which led to concerns in Australia about China’s growing influence in the region. Australia therefore pledged to fund an Internet submarine cable to Papua New Guinea. The settlement stopped a Chinese plan for the cable project.
In October, a boy died in polio, 18 years after the disease was assumed to be eradicated in the country. Several cases were reported, and mass vaccination was carried out.
In November, Papua New Guinea hosted the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperations (APEC) Summit with the world’s most powerful leaders. Prior to the meeting, Australia sent about 1,500 military personnel with naval vessels and fighter planes to the capital Port Moresby to ensure security. It was also announced that Papua New Guinea and Australia will build a joint naval base on the island of Manus with a strategic location towards the Pacific Ocean.
Economic conditions
Having achieved independence (1975), international aid in the form of capital and technologies capable of providing immediate profits were indispensable tools for the socio-economic development of the country. Even in conditions of dependence on the more industrialized areas, the country it has therefore seen the development of some productive sectors (including above all the mining one, in addition to plantation agriculture), which have gradually consolidated. Foreign companies, in particular Japanese, Australian, US and German companies, have intervened, according to a ‘code’ of regulation prepared by the government, in the creation of a basic industrial sector, including mining, alongside local companies engaged in the activities agricultural, commercial and industrial. The harvesting of spontaneous products, once the only source of livelihood for the population, has been gradually accompanied by subsistence agriculture, sometimes linked to the ancient system of debasing but now also practiced in small and medium-sized farms with new methods, and speculative agriculture. , initiated by European settlers both on the fertile coastal plains and on the plateau and, after autonomy, also introduced into indigenous peasant enterprises. Among the crops for self-consumption emerge batata, cereals (rice, corn, sorghum), cassava, peanuts, fruit and vegetables. The rest of the agricultural production is directed towards crops destined for export (coffee, cocoa, coconuts). The weight of the breeding is low, however subject to modern experiments and aimed above all at pigs, poultry and cattle. The resources of the forests are considerable (82% of the surface), but the exploitation is too sustained and to a large extent also illegal, a circumstance that causes serious environmental problems. Mining is the country’s main source of income: it supplies copper (Bougainville Island), gold (Porgera, Ok Tedi, Lihir), silver and oil (Hedinia, Agogo). Industrial activity is very limited, with few plants in the food (sugar), mechanical and wood sectors. If on the one hand, therefore, the economic situation of Papua New Guinea presents favorable growth prospects, various conditions hinder the take-off of development: the dependence on mining and forestry production, characterized by low added value and mainly guaranteed by foreign companies, which does not give rise to accumulation phenomena or reinvestments in the manufacturing sector; the lack of territorial infrastructures; the natural isolation, which was only partially remedied with a free trade agreement with the Australia (1991) and with the entry (1993) in the APEC ; the growing effects of deforestation, albeit far less noticeable than in the western half of New Guinea; the dispute between local populations and concessionary companies of mining and forestry activities, regarding land ownership rights; finally, the severe droughts that have repeatedly hit the country, especially in the highlands region. Furthermore, the repercussions of the confrontation taking place in the Indonesian provinces and the consequences of the independence attempts of the island of Bougainville have been very serious for years.
The most functional communications are the maritime ones, which can count on numerous ports for connections with Australia, New Zealand and the USA, and the aerial ones that rely for passenger traffic at airports (the main one is Port Moresby) or simple runways. landing located in several locations in the country. Terrestrial communication routes are very poor: railways are completely missing and the roads (approx. 20,000 km) are only minimally asphalted.
