Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Poverty drives the unsuspecting poor into the
hands of traffickers Published reports & articles from 2000 to 2025 gvnet.com/humantrafficking/PapuaNewGuinea.htm
Papua New Guinea is
a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children
trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced
labor. Women and children are trafficked within the country for the purposes
of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic servitude; men are trafficked
to logging and mining camps for the purpose of forced labor. Women and
children from Malaysia, Thailand, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and
the Philippines are trafficked to Papua New Guinea for forced prostitution
and PRC men are trafficked to the country for forced labor. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009 Check
out a later country report here and possibly a full TIP Report here |
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CAUTION: The following
links have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Papua New
Guinea. Some of these links may lead
to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No attempt has been made to validate their
authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEB-PAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Human Trafficking are of
particular interest to you. Would you like
to write about Forced-Labor? Debt
Bondage? Prostitution? Forced Begging? Child Soldiers? Sale of Organs? etc. On the other
hand, you might choose to include precursors of trafficking such as poverty and hunger. There is a lot to
the subject of Trafficking. Scan other
countries as well. Draw comparisons
between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** When the Bartered
Bride Opts Out of the Bargain Seth Mydans, "A
Bartered Bride’s ‘No’ Stuns Papua New Guinea: Rejection of Tribal Customs is
a Sign of Changing Times," New York Times, 7 May 1997 www.nytimes.com/1997/05/06/world/when-the-bartered-bride-opts-out-of-the-bargain.html [accessed 6 February
2016] The compensation
demand for the killing of a clan leader in this remote mountain village
followed a complex tribal calculus: $15,000, 25 pigs and an 18-year-old woman
named Miriam Wilngal. Miriam Wilngal said
no. At first, she said,
it had not occurred to her to object. Women have been bought as brides in parts
of this Pacific island nation for centuries. It has been only a few decades
since the tribes that populate the remote mountains here discovered that they
are not the only people on earth, and village life still mostly follows
ancient codes. But in a striking
sign of changing times, Miss Wilngal had a personal ambition. She wanted to
finish high school. ''I want to learn to be a typist,'' she said in an
interview in Port Moresby, the capital, 300 miles to the southeast, where she
has taken refuge from her angry relatives. 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Papua New Guinea U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/papua-new-guinea/
[accessed 21 June
2021] PROHIBITION OF
FORCED OR COMPULSORY LABOR Foreign and local
men and boys seeking work on fishing vessels go into debt to pay recruitment
fees, which vessel owners and senior crew leverage to compel them to continue
working indefinitely. The law allows officials, on order of a judge or magistrate,
to apprehend a noncitizen crewmember of a foreign-registered ship who fails
to rejoin the crewmember’s ship during its time in the country. The
crewmember is placed at the disposal of the diplomatic representative of the
country in which the ship is registered (or, if no such representation
exists, the ship’s owner or representative) in order to return the crewmember
to the ship. Observers noted this practice might prevent foreign workers from
reporting or escaping situations of forced labor. There were reports
that foreign and local women and children were subjected to forced labor as
domestic servants, as beggars or street vendors, and in the tourism sector
(see section 7.c.). Foreign and local men were subjected to forced labor,
including through debt bondage, in the logging, mining, and fishing sectors.
There also were reports of foreign workers, particularly from China and other
Pacific nations, entering the country with fraudulent documents and being
subjected to forced labor. PROHIBITION OF CHILD
LABOR AND MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT Many children
worked in the informal economy and were seen directing parking vehicles and
selling cigarettes, food, and DVDs on the street and in grocery stores
throughout the country, sometimes near mining and logging camps. There were
reports of boys as young as 12 being exploited as “market taxis” in urban
areas, carrying extremely heavy loads for low pay; some may have been victims
of forced labor. There were also reports of children engaging in mining
activities, including prospectors forcing children to work in alluvial gold
mining. Children worked
mainly in subsistence agriculture, cash crop farming, and livestock herding.
This included seasonal work on plantations (for coffee, tea, copra, and palm
oil) in the formal and informal rural economies. Some children
(primarily girls) worked long hours as domestic servants in private homes,
often to repay a family debt to the “host” family, in situations that
sometimes constituted forced labor. In some cases the host was a relative who
informally “adopted” the child. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/papua-new-guinea/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 8 July
2020] G4. DO INDIVIDUALS
ENJOY EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION? Legal safeguards
against exploitative working conditions are weakly enforced, and frequent
abuses in sectors including logging and mining have been reported. The
government does not actively prosecute human traffickers, and efforts to
identify victims are inadequate. The US Labor Department has previously
assembled evidence of child labor in the coffee, cocoa, palm oil, and rubber
sectors, as well as in commercial sexual exploitation. In the 2019 edition
of its Trafficking in Persons Report, the US State Department reported that
bride-price payments facilitated labor and sexual exploitation. The
department also reported that women and children were often ensnared in sex
trafficking or forced servitude after they were promised legitimate education
or employment opportunities. 2017 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor Office of Child Labor,
Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking, Bureau of International Labor Affairs,
US Dept of Labor, 2018 www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ilab/ChildLaborReport_Book.pdf [accessed 22 April
2019] www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/child_labor_reports/tda2017/ChildLaborReportBook.pdf [accessed 4 May
2020] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor [page 794] In Papua New
Guinea, children are exploited in commercial sex. (1; 10) Some children from
rural areas are sent to live with relatives or “host” families in cities,
where they may be forced to perform domestic work to pay off family debts.
(1; 3; 2) The government has
established laws and regulations related to child labor (Table 4). However,
gaps exist in Papua New Guinea’s legal framework to adequately protect
children from child labor, including the identification of hazardous
occupations or activities prohibited for children and the prohibition of
commercial sexual exploitation of children. Country Operations
Plan 2007
[PDF] United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR, 2007 www.unhcr.org/home/RSDCOI/452f50342.pdf [access date
unavailable] www.refworld.org/pdfid/452f50342.pdf [accessed 11
February 2018] OBJECTIVE 2:
STRENGTHEN THE CAPACITY OF LOCAL PARTNERS IN PNG, INCLUDING GOPNG, TO PROVIDE
EFFECTIVE PROTECTION AND ASSISTANCE TO PERSONS OF CONCERN - UNHCR will
continue to conduct workshops on the role and core mandate of UNHCR, and on
the Refugee Convention in relation to Migration and Human Trafficking
training for GoPNG officials from Immigration, the Police, the
Judiciary, and Customs. This will ensure that by 2009 competent staff
at the border towns are able to identify asylum seekers and refugees among
migrants, are aware of PNG’s international obligations, and respond
appropriately. Neo Melanesian, 6
Nov 2003 www.png-gossip.com/news/g031106.html#ht [accessed 15
December 2010] [scroll down] HUMAN TRAFFICKING
- The Federal Police from Australia have warned that PNG risks the potential
to be exploited in the global problem of human trafficking. It has been said
that PNG is an easy target because of its close proximity to Australia and
any person could easily pick up PNG on the world map and say "I can get
to Australia through PNG". This could account for the increasing numbers
of illegal arrivals in PNG in the past few months. People smuggling usually
involved highly orchestrated syndicates within the region Delegates agree to
strengthen efforts to reduce demand for Commerical Sexual Exploitation Of
Children Joint Media Release:
ECPAT International, UNESCAP, UNICEF, 11 November 2004, At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 10
September 2011] In the Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 30 January 2004 www.universalhumanrightsindex.org/documents/829/501/document/en/text.html [accessed 15
December 2010] [57] The Committee,
while welcoming the ratification in 2000 by the State party of ILO
Conventions No. 138 concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment of
1973 and No. 182 concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the
Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour of 1999, remains concerned at
the significant number of children working, inter alia, as domestic servants. The
Protection Project - The www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/papua.doc [accessed 2009] FACTORS THAT
CONTRIBUTE TO THE TRAFFICKING INFRASTRUCTURE – www.hrw.org/asia/papua-new-guinea [accessed 15
December 2010] ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human
Rights Reports » 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78787.htm [accessed 10
February 2020] CHILDREN - Some children were
forced to work long hours as domestic servants in private homes, often to
repay a family debt to the "host" family. Child brides
frequently were taken as additional wives or given as brides to pay family
debts and often were used as domestic servants. Child brides were
particularly vulnerable to domestic abuse TRAFFICKING IN
PERSONS
– The law does not prohibit trafficking in persons. There were reports of
trafficking within the country. Custom requires the family of the groom to
pay a "bride price" to the family of the bride. While marriages
were usually consensual, women and female children were sometimes sold
against their will. There were also reports of Asian women being trafficked
into the country to work in the sex industry. Transactional sex was common
and often involved the sexual exploitation of children. The government
investigated allegations of corruption among officials dealing with passport
issuance and immigration. The allegations primarily involved the illegal
issuance of residence and work permits for Chinese or South Asian nationals
migrating to the country. Nevertheless, there was concern that the country
may be have been used as a route for trafficking in persons to Australia. The Department of Labor’s 2005 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor [PDF] www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2005/tda2005.pdf [accessed 15
December 2010] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor CHILD LABOR LAWS AND
ENFORCEMENT
- The worst forms of child labor may be prosecuted under different statutes
in Papua New Guinea. The Constitution prohibits forced labor. The Criminal
Code prohibits procuring, luring, or abducting women or girls for sexual
relations or for confinement in a brothel. The Department of Labor and
Industrial Relations and the Department of Police are responsible for
implementing and enforcing child labor laws; however, the U.S. Department of
State reports that enforcement by those departments has been poor. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery – |
