 Good morning everyone, or good evening if you are on the other side of the dateline in Papua New Guinea. Thank you for joining us for this event entitled A Local Approach to Papua New Guinea's Wildfires of Violence. My name is Gordon Peake, I'm the Senior Advisor for the Pacific Islands at the United States Institute of Peace and I'm going to be moderating this panel that comprises three people whose work and I admire tremendously and I'm really glad to be able to be able to be moderating this with them. They are Dr. Elizabeth Koppel from the National Research Institute in Papua New Guinea, Mr. William Kapongi from the National Research Institute in Papua New Guinea and Professor Paige West from Barnard College at Columbia University. I think of the National Research Institute as almost USIP's sister or brother organization in Papua New Guinea. United States Institute of Peace is a national non-partisan independent institute founded by Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible and the Institute works with local partners to prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict and there's a great analog here with the work of the National Research Institute founded by an active parliament of Papua New Guinea to conduct independent policy research and like USIP does works with and alongside the government of Papua New Guinea. We at USIP have programs all over the world but our newest program is in Papua New Guinea, a country that is becoming of ever more interest to the United States and here especially in Washington DC. There's a bunch of reasons for that interest. There's a wider interest in the Pacific Islands region in Washington in general the United States and Papua New Guinea recently signed a Defense Cooperation Act and Papua New Guinea is one of the five countries or regions that has been designated under the Global Fragility Act as places where the United States is trying to concentrate work on peace building and the number of people that are joining us online is I think is testament to the interest that there is in Papua New Guinea and the increasing interest and it's great to see. Our work at USIP in Papua New Guinea consists of three components. We work on men's behavior change programs trying to address issues of interpersonal violence. We do policy work in Washington DC and in Port Moresby trying to connect up thought leaders, policymakers, practitioners to try to get together and share their experiences. Last week in Washington DC we convened the first ever United States Papua New Guinea Track 1.5 dialogue bringing together leaders and thinkers from the two different countries to kind of interact and work through issues. We do and we do also as we do research work and I'm delighted that we're here to talk about two of the streams of research work here. We do research work that focuses on trying to on tribal fighting and on source re-acquisition related violence and I'm delighted that Elizabeth who's leading our work on tribal fighting and William who's leading our work on source re-acquisition related violence are here. These are words that in some ways feel like they're almost transplanted from from another age from another century but as William and Elizabeth will tell us they are very very real in terms of their very modern very real and very damaging in terms of stability. Elizabeth and William are working on these projects with Professor Miranda Forsythe of the Australian National University in Canberra and Miranda has this very evocative way of describing source re-acquisition related violence and tribal fighting. She thinks that she describes them as wildfires this wonderfully kind of evocative image and to use Miranda's words many of the landscapes in Papua New Guinea are flammable and the sparks that trigger accusations that fan embers of suspicion into a burning inferno. Elizabeth and William are also working on profiling some of the figures that are working to try to put away these embers, these spot fires, these infernos of violence. Firefighters who are working in many ways on a volunteer capacity and often almost almost the vision I have in my mind is of kind of some with a bucket trying to put out a vast wildfire. Elizabeth and William have been working on a research project with us to try to count the number of fires that are raging large and small in the country and they've been combing through newspapers in order to try to develop a longitudinal account of trends. It is slow, laborious and difficult and unshoey work and we're really really grateful for you to do that initial work that will enable us to then all collectively do the analysis on this. What we wanted to do in this presentation was give Elizabeth first and then William the opportunity to reflect on their research and then we'll ask Paige drawing on her near three decades of work and experience in Papua New Guinea to maybe pick out, maybe amplify some of the findings that Elizabeth and William will present. So without further ado I'm going to ask Elizabeth to speak first. She's going to speak for about 10, 15 minutes or so. We'll pass it on to William and then we'll ask Paige to round off which will hopefully give us a number of a good amount of time for questions from people in the room and also for the audience that are joining us online. Once again thank you very much and Elizabeth over to you. Thank you. Just a bit more addition to the introduction made by Gordon Papua New Guinea National Research Institute is funded by government but it is independent in that we decide what we want to research on and the government does not say. So we have three Amoto with three eyes, inquire, inform and influence. So we do that research, we go out and inform the research findings to decision makers and we try to influence policy through different mediums. So it is, yeah, in a way it's like sister organization of equivalent to USIP. So my presentation today will be broad but it will also reflect on some of the initial findings of the project we are doing with USIP. There's always a technical thing over here. So one of the points that was made through the presentations last week and yesterday's presentations by Ruth and Suwabi is that we're a country that's unified but there's great diversity, unity and diversity. There's differences between rural urban areas in that 85% of the population in rural areas, only about 14% in urban areas, 600 islands, more than 600 islands, 800 languages. So with those come the different cultures and we have petrilineal systems of descent, metrilineal systems, land ownership patterns also differ along with those differences in culture and systems of descent. So it's like you're trying to put 100 different cultures or countries, unite them into one country. So from the outside it will look like they're one country but we're really struggling with trying to live with each other, understand each other, given all those different diversities. So the culture is different. I've got some pictures there to show some of the ways in which people dress up and dance, one from Chihuahua, one from the men from western islands and a group from Medellin. So knowledge about culture is passed on from one generation to another by, it's a oral tradition, culture with oral traditions. So parents pass on knowledge to children by engaging them, children participate in what parents do. So in this picture on the right you see adults and children dancing together. So that's how children get knowledge passed on and maintain their culture. In the study that we are doing in partnership with ANU, Professor Miranda Forsythe, funded by USIP, it engages in collecting and documenting data on tribal fights, backdating five years. So there's two national newspapers, the Post-Korea and the National. So we've paged through every day's publication through the week back in 2018 to 2022. And from there we focused on the islands provinces because given the diversity tribal fights usually occur in the islands provinces and not on the coast. It's not common on the coast. So we focused on in the seven islands provinces. And one of the limitations is that it just captures those events or recorded cases. So what was not reported is not captured here. That's a limitation of using archival records for collecting data. Just to give you a picture of, I think those who attended yesterday's sessions, so I'll be at the map up, but I've got that as well and there's no way to indicate. But the spine of the mainland of New Guinea, the seven provinces there, that's where the tribal fighting is focused on is dominant. Ella province, southern islands, Enga province, western islands, Jiwaka, Simbu to an extent and eastern islands, but the upper islands is where most of the fighting takes place. And in one province William will tell you more about that in his talk, but that's where fighting is actively happening now. So just to give you some preliminary observations from the data, they're changing features of the way fighting is happening now compared to how it used to be done previously. Traditionally, there were strict sanctions governing battles. So it occurred in the battlefield. They didn't take it home. They didn't take it to other places. And those sanctions were observed. So if two enemies found each other in another place outside of their own province, they wouldn't attack each other or property was respected, women were respected, children were respected. And you could go and spectate in tribal fights. If you're an independent party, you were allowed to spectate, you were allowed to pass through. And those people became the ones who would ferry injured or the wounded or the dead to the hospital or to safety. But that's changed now. So anything that's in the way is being attacked. Traditionally, the types of weapons that were used, they just used rudimentary objects like bowls, arrows, beers. And in some places, there was some kind of poison where they would poison the food. So if you ate the food, you died. So leaders became the target of that kind of practice. But now that practice is gone. So people are resorting to the use of high-powered guns. And this is exacerbated by the use of mobile phones. So if an incident occurs in one part of the country, people are quickly alerted. So some innocent person could become the target because something happened in the village. So the fighting is taken to other places almost instantly. And in yesterday's presentation, we've also heard of the hired gunmen. So if you're a good gunman, you put yourself up or I'll be your man to hit the target on the other side. So there are incidences where gunmen from unrelated places can volunteer their services. So a few years ago, in one of those tribal fights in my province, one of the gunmen was killed and he was literally crucified. And our best friend of mine is the relative of that person. But her family never claimed the body because they didn't want to be the target. He went and participated in another clan from another, a totally different area to offer services. So when they die, their relatives will not come in situations where they really don't want to be part of someone else's fight. But sometimes they would come up. If they know you're from that area and you're engaging in that, then your people become the target. So it's commercialized now. One of the differences is that the range of courses were limited, driving factors. Again, Ruth made a mention. People or tribes fought over land or land resources, women, and payback, physical payback, payback or poisoning, killing someone through poisoning their food. But now we have so many new driving factors that have come into play. In addition to that traditional list of courses, you've got people fighting for economic resources, whether it's ownership of land on which development project is located or coffee plantations, things like that. Politics and reductions is another common driving cost of tribal fights. Accidents, real accidents through which people die. That's also taken up as a course of fight, even if the person was not intending to harm someone from another area. Alcohol-related factors or lack of law enforcement, if an incident occurs and the law doesn't intervene quickly enough, then people resort to taking the law into their own hands. And sometimes fights are instigated by law enforcement agencies. For instance, during the elections, many of the law enforcement agencies appear to be there for everyone, but they are literally pushing one person's interest. So if things don't work out, then there are other people of property and then that leads to tribal fights. So these are some of the preliminary observations of the range of driving factors that have come up in the study. This slide is just pictures. The one on the left is a reenactment from a recent cultural show of a fight, but the one on the right, I borrowed it from William. That shows some of the kind of weapons that are used, but these are basic. They don't bring out the high power in some of the really complicated weapons that they have. And the route through which these weapons are coming in has been questioned many times. So the borders are porous from the western side. They're not polished as effectively. And there's only one entrance in the north through Vanimo, but the rest of the western border is not really protected. So that's the likely route through which weapons come in. And in elections, people see these weapons. Tribal fights, these weapons are being used. And the leaders are part of the problem because they are the ones who finance the purchase of these weapons. They don't say it, but we know that village people will not have that kind of money to buy weapons. So they say, oh, let's stop it, but they're the ones who are financing the accumulation of weapons. Yeah, the effects of tribal fights, economic effects are all too common. This is a picture again, William kindly offered me this picture from the current tribal fight that's going on in his province. So when this fight, everything goes down in flames, whether it's a modern house or a vehicle, your garden trees, coffees, everything that's in the way went down. And this is reality. So so many people are internally displaced. In terms of physical injury and death, that picture is also William's picture taken from one of the course of the current fight that he'll tell you about. So in the corner, you see a coffin box, but there's three more that are next to it. So I won't speak much about that. That's William's part to expound on it. But it's real. There are gruesome pictures, you know, people keep sending pictures. And William suggested I include some, but you know, it's I can't stand the sight of them because there's a pictures that no one should see, you know, body parts missing. Yeah. And I can't swallow when I see pictures like that. So that's diplomatic one way that you can see for yourself. But in that, there's three other coffins where William's relatives have been attacked in a recent fight. The displacement and trauma on the right. In the current fight that's going on in Enga, 21 tribes are involved. And there's been more than 80 deaths, about 10,000 people are displaced. And that's in the literal sense, like they are refugees in their own country. So where do they go? Many of them end up coming to hugging or what must be. Then some of these issues get transferred with the people, you know, what do you do with the women, the children, where they get their food? It's like having a refugee camp or people are just everywhere. And no one talks about this. We are interested in other issues. For those people who are displaced, you know, kids not having to go to school, even in the fights, the schools are attacked as well. So the schools get burnt down, health centers get burnt down. So the rules are not there anymore. Previously, they would say, okay, leave the school, leave the health center. We'll take our engine there. But now when everything goes literally, there's nothing. So people go and live with other people who may be related through marriage or other kinds of relationships. So they leave the province and they go to other provinces. And then we have, you know, additional issues on health services, demand for education and health services. So yeah, this is my last slide in terms of the, not last slide, second last slide, in terms of the types of interventions that have taken place. Previously, they used to be coercive marches, but that forced one group literally to leave that land they're fighting over and just send them somewhere else. But that's not done anymore. In the formal sense of the kind of interventions that are through law and justice sector, they would put in place like systems legal systems in place, but that takes time. So in the meantime, people have to live with the challenges. Some of the sort of interventions are like setting up state of emergencies that to stop people from moving around and engaging in fights or collecting weapons. But I think in Younger province, they tried the state of emergency. And there's another the intervention called the operation making survey. That's where the leaders, community leaders get together with the justice representatives and they set terms and conditions for warring tribes to observe and demands that they should meet. In terms of the informal community driven initiatives, those are the ones that have more lasting impact because it comes from the people themselves. When they decide that they've had enough fighting and they want to change, they are the ones that ensure that these initiatives work for them. From where I come from, my I can't even remember when my tribe was engaged in fighting in the 60s. So ever since I went to school, they've always been fighting with one group or another. And they stopped fighting when I was doing my masters in Australia. That's when the leaders came together and they said enough. So from before I started school, right up to when I was I did my own masters, when I was doing my masters, they stopped and it didn't come from outside. It came from inside because when they looked around at other clans and tribes, everyone was so advanced. The children have been going to school. There's so much peace. You know, people started building modern houses. Roads were going into the villages. Electricity was going in and they said, no, we've had enough now. We want change. So from about 1990 to now, they've lived in peace. So when something happens, if someone aggravates my tribe, all the leaders would come together and say we want compensation. Or if one of our boys creates trouble with another tribe, they would say we'll pay compensation. So stop or we'll end up with a guy, whatever you want. We'll send him, yeah, end him over to the police. So that's from my experience. When the community decided enough is enough, we've had enough of this, then it lasts. So that's basically based on experience. Another type of intervention is hybrid forms like mixing the modern with the traditional where the community comes up with bylaws and they write them into the community board council system and they say these are the things we will do or we will not do. And then that kind of holds them to account with the modern system. So that's another way where interventions have been taking place. So the last slide, what interventions are needed? We do have to acknowledge that there's no quick fix solution to this culturally embedded system. Over time, whatever we have to do will be a slow process. So it does require a multi-stakeholder approach, collaboration to address the root causes whether it's through the justice system by effectively prosecuting perpetrators. And with the tribal fighting, it's difficult because the whole tribe is involved. You come to one person to account. You could probably identify the initial person who was the course of it. But I remember when police used to come in to arrest people, they would take all my uncles and fathers and brothers. The cell was too full, couldn't accommodate them. So then they had a challenge. So that let them go and then a fight would start up again. And that's the difficulty they had and it's still a challenge. So working with church partnerships, that's also one way to help through the education system, especially to change the mindset of the younger generation. The older people are set in their ways. It's difficult to change them. But if we work with younger people, then hopefully they will grow up with different values, different outlook on life. And also to address violence perpetrated by law enforcement agents. That's also an area that needs to be worked on with our law enforcement agencies, particularly the police. That defense is not a problem until election time when they are called on to help with election observations. Some of the perpetrators are defense officials who are called out to help with the election observations. And then another way to do this would be to review the laws governing the integrity of political candidates during elections because election period is really marked by a lot of violence, particularly in the islands. And my view is that if those people who are aspiring to be political leaders were made to account for the actions of their supporters or voters, we'd have more peace. If there was a system in place to say, well, if your supporters are found to be causing trouble, then you disqualify. Maybe something like that would help leaders to hold their community to account for the actions. If you do this, then I'll be disqualified, so make sure you behave yourselves. That's my view. And the last point is to improve service delivery to these streets. If people had better services, then along with education and other interventions, they would not congregate in the big towns and cities in the utmost peace overcrowded. The issues of settlements are just beyond the ability of the city authority to manage. So everyone's coming in because there's no services. In some places, when fighting happens, these services are destroyed. But when services are provided, people could be told, look after this, stay here, don't come into towns and cities. So then hopefully that will be, that will help them to appreciate the services that are provided. Because right now, our education system's going down, the healthcare system's just beyond comprehension. In terms of what the U.S., if it's looking to help what areas it should invest on, there's so many vantage points. Like education is one area, health is one area. Education in terms of providing opportunities for young people. And with that can be areas where it can, just to give you an example, one, we met one young Papua New Guinean male who Swabis knows well. And just to give an example of education, the intervention in the education sector, he's from Tari, where the Prime Minister comes from. There's a lot of fighting in that area. But what he said he's doing is bringing young men from the enemy tribes to the U.S., accommodates them in his own house. He finances their schooling here. So they grow up as brothers and not as enemies. And then with that, it gives them the education about, you know, awareness about fighting is not the way to resolve conflict. We have to learn to live in peace. We are one people. Those kind of, you know, basic information which may be taken for granted. But that's one way in which one person is trying to help. But if the U.S. was supposed to, was going to help young people in Papua New Guinean, it would be useful to intervene in the education sector where male awareness, education, not just for men but women too, to intervene in key, not in the complete system, but at key points, like when they are doing year 11 and 12 or when they come into university, their orientation programs specifically targeted areas to help them in that sector. And the church partnerships, the churches do important work in many of the rural communities where the government is not there. And they provide health services. They provide schools and mostly, most times with very little resources. So working with churches and NGOs to deliver services like that is really worthwhile. And for research, in terms of research, it's also important to document what's happening. So if there are interventions, it's important to collect baseline data and monitor and evaluate. So research is a key role to play. That's how Tuofast came in. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. Even sometimes when you're sitting in Washington DC, words like conflict and stability and fragility, they can feel sort of abstract. And no matter how much you've studied it, and you've just done such a wonderful job of presenting this really textured sort of detail of realities that there are. So thank you. Thank you so much for that and some really thought-provoking ideas as well that we'll hopefully deal with in Page's remarks. And then the discussion with a good time afterwards. Before I turn to William, we know we mentioned these firefighters before. And William is one of these firefighters. William is someone who's been really involved intimately and carried the pain of conflict yourself over the last three or four months in trying to sort of put out some of these fires that are raging in Anga, which is the province where William hails from that Elizabeth mentioned in her talk. So William will talk a little bit about that, but he'll also talk about the work that he's been engaging in, which is about, I'd say, an adjacent link sort of interconnected part of violence that is raging and other wildfire in terms of source-reaccusation related violence. So we'll get that queued up and then we'll get William to talk. And maybe it might be worth just beginning William. This is a very elaborate plan that was put together. Papua New Guinea I think had led the world in terms of developing a plan to address sorcery and witchcraft accusations related violence. And some of the components that you talk about Elizabeth all interconnected in terms of health and sort of education and research. What's happened to the plan? What's happened to the plan? Afterwards it was put, what 2015 it was put, it was set up, it was launched. I think it was important for Elizabeth when it was launched. What's happened since and from there? Thank you Gordon. We have the Sorcery National Action Plan that was formulated in 2015. And we have a Sorcery National Action Planning Committee that is driving the Action Plan and you can already see on the globe the five thematic areas of the National Action Plan. So those are the platforms that were provided by the national government to address sorcery accusations related violence in the country. So when we look at that aspect of violence, it's not just like any other ordinary GBV or gender-based violence. It's sort of like intergenerational because once a family or mother is being accused, there is 90% possibility of the daughter being accused, the father being accused, and it goes on. So it stigmatized the old generation of the particular person being accused. So it's a terrible violence that we see but we are more or less, I mean, trying to look at it in a very concrete way in itself would be a very best way forward for addressing sorcery accusations related violence. Well, I will continue. From the research perspective, I am engaged with other two universities, the University of Divinewood and the Australian National University. We are a team working research on sorcery. And as you can see the column in the middle, it's giving the database of the records of newspaper articles 22 years back from 1998 to 2020. So in that span of 22 years, we have recorded about 484 cases, the articles. And as you can see on the column, where Morro Bay Province, where Zewer Bay comes from, has a leading number of articles on sorcery that came up in the two print medias that we have in the country. And when you further go down below the column, there's this other Provinces who have six cases, seven cases, eight cases, reported for the last 20 years. But it doesn't really capture the essence of sorcery in the country. This is just giving you the figures that came up in the media. But when you go to the actual Provinces, you will see that sorcery believe is very ancient. And it also depends on who is reporting from what places. Some generalists see that what some of the activities related to sorcery are part of them. So they don't feel that it's something exciting that can be reported. In some part of the Provinces, where the violence is very common, it captures the media attention. So in the case of Morro Bay, where most of these cases are reported constantly. And that's why we have a bigger number of cases reported for Morro Bay compared to the other Provinces. And the column on the right-hand side, it's giving actually the data of the incidents recorded for the last four years. And that's why ANU, Divine Word and the NRI have been collaborating to do research in four Provinces over the last four years. That's dating back 2016 to 2020. So we have selected four Provinces. Well, don't ask me why those four Provinces, because I was not part of the group that has decided the project. So in those four Provinces, we have recorded on the ground. We have been recording the cases that comes up in the Provinces. So it's just like they are recording about one-third, or maybe one-quarter of the incidents that could be happening in the Provinces. And then those recorders send forms back to us, to me, and then I am updating the sorcery database. So over the last four years, we have recorded about 1,039 cases. And in those cases, we have about 1,554 survivors of the victims. Why we have bigger number of victims is because in one case, there's a possibility of mother, father, and the child being accused. Or there's a lot of people who have been accused. Maybe as a clan, as a family, or as a group. So it's a possibility because, as I mentioned yesterday, Papua Nguni is a communal oriented families and societies and clans. One person problem is sort of identified as everyone's problem. So that's the data. And on the map, you can see those four shaded colors representing the poor Provinces. You can see Anga province far left. The other one is Joaka. Right below is the capital for Mosby and Boganville on the other side. So those are more or less the four areas that we have been doing resets on sorcery. And the general perception on sorcery in Papua Nguni, when we look at some of those findings, they are mostly driven by three world views that people live in. Particularly the scientific world view. Many people will interpret everything scientifically. When you talk about sickness and death, they're already explaining the causes of sickness. It could be typhoid, it could be cancer, it could be malaria. And there are another group of people who religiously interpret everything. It's a plan of God. They had a car accident because God already pre-planned for it. And these are another group of people who are living in deep world view. And then we have this cultural world view. Regardless of what you do, if you're meant to die, you die. If your sickness will not be cured, it won't be cured. So that's why some of those who have been accused, the perpetrators seem to be living in those three of the world views. When someone tried to come up with a scientific world view and started telling him, look, we have a cancer that causes the sickness of this person. But then the perpetrator will come around and say, no, he has done something in the village which is not okay for the cultural community. It's against the culture that finally leads to the cancer and is dying. So there's always an explanation that goes back to find a satisfactory answer that someone is dying of a sorcery. So the funny thing is, when there is someone being sick or someone is dying, people are not started interested in asking what is the cause or what happened. But they started asking who is the cause? Who was the last person whom the person eat with? Or who was the last person that passed by before the guy died? And that's when someone is identified. So this sort of world view put people in a perspective where there's a lot of chances to people being accused. In the communities where there's a lot of literate people like urban centers, there is less chances of accusations because everyone is governed by laws and rules and policies. In communities where there is a lot of cultural oriented settings where there's no government services, there's a lot of cultural things, stories and all that narrative going around. So PNC is really sort of like a country that has every household seem to have their own beliefs and have their own ways of doing things. So what you try in Los Angeles won't work in Washington. So it's really a big state but that's the kind of example that we see even in one particular province or in one district they still have a variation of beliefs and practices that makes it very complicated for people to convince them to come out of those beliefs and mindsets. And even the societal structures. Bougainville is a matrilineal society sorry where the mother has to take over the world of the family. And in that places from the data that we have a lot of men being accused of sorcery. And whereas when you come to the highlands where a lot of the society is a patrilineal a lot of women been accused. Well it doesn't really give us a clear cut whether those society can guarantee us to judge and come up with an absolute conclusion because there's a lot of diverse situations that we witness. Nowadays a lot of accusations coming up in places like Gulf province where there used to be a lot of men accused. Just recently we have recorded one case where women has been accused and tortured. So there is this sort of like shift what has not been common in one area it's becoming common. So the narratives are I mean moving from one area to the other because of interrelations people moving in and out and they're sort of more complicated. I mean it becomes the issue becomes more complicated because of the movement the narratives that people are picking up. And that's I mean actually the changing ecology of self. The picture on the other side is a family that left the village they left everything. I mean the houses went on fire the gardens and even about three families have to vacate the area and flee to another community. And what is on the other fixer is what happened in the coastal area where people have never witnessed such related to sorcery. And this happened in the western province where just last year a family has been attacked over a sorcery accusation because of someone is being sick. So you see places where there is no accusation of men now there is accusation of men. And also there is evidence of violence in the places where there used to be none. When you look at the coastal areas there is the belief in sorcery is very ancient. It's going back to three four generations but there hasn't been any violence. And now there are a few violence coming up. In the highlands provinces where there is no belief in sorcery because of the narratives coming up and they started picking up on behaviors that seemed to suspect of sorcery. So that's why because of their own behavior and way of living they resort to violence because if you want to take my land I have to fight to get back my land. So that's the kind of the character that usually the highlands people have. And now we have a growing number of children being a victim of this south and no one ever talked about this. We have a lot of them and children are even discriminated in the schools. They cannot, the families who have been accused, their children cannot attend school with the kids of the other people. So there's a growing number of kids being affected. Some kids are made to watch their parents being tortured and even they were asked them to torture them out them because it will make them free from the sorcery spirit that is in the person. So these are very sad scenarios that we seem to record. And who has been accused and how? There is no particular type of group of people have been targeted now in the country. You can see the person on the other side is a public servant, is a police and is a community leader. And you can see those two couple in the second photo and you can see the young man and you can see the child. Regardless of whether you are public servant, regardless of whether you are family, young man, there's potential for you to be accused. And then I just want to say something about the child on the other picture there. He has that skin disease because of his mother has been accused. They were saying that the sorcery spirit has gone to the child and it's sort of like deteriorating the skin of that child. So the child was also accused. And when you look at going down below, these are the types of violence that we have. They type women and those accused on poles, spread legs, started torturing them with hot irons, putting them into the private parts and then they get hot irons and then place them into the breast and the body and then started telling them, please converse that you have eaten the heart or you have killed the person through a sorcery. So they are doing all those sort of things just to make them converse that they have done it. So to the extreme that they cannot stand those violence, some said, yes, I did it. And I had been interviewing more than 20 survivors and they said, we are seeing those out of extreme pressure and just we just want to relieve. So it's a sad scenario. And even those living with, you know, this that woman, interesting woman with one arm on the other side. When I went to Shukansi just give me the one that is nothing, I mean, the amputated one because the other arm, I gave some money and she was holding onto that money. So there are these people, they're just living also within the community helpless. They can not do anything because they're physically disabled. So who can we go to? There's another area that we handicapped that we are not even tapped into yet. And civil society responds to social reaccusation related violence. These are some of the gatherings that I participated. The first one is there is an old clan been dispersed for the last 20 years. And then now they gather them together and then they ask government representative NRI and then we were there witnessing them asking or inviting them to come back. And then we have a two week ceremony of conversation and then forgiveness and then shaking hands and then sharing tears, breaking the bowels and then putting them up in the flames, planting tank yet as if, you know, that's that's the covenant that they will not never get into those sort of accusations. So that was emotional moment that I, one of those event that I witnessed. And the other one is one of those NGOs training young ones to do awareness using media media platforms like videos, Facebook, WhatsApp and similar sort of work Ruth is doing with travel foundations. And the other photo is a group of counselors and community leaders. And I was invited to say a bit of information on sorcery and we helped them to come up with bylaws. We asked them, what are your values? What is it that you want to sustain to address sorcery? So we helped them to do their own community rules. And the interesting thing is some communities, when they go home, they have to put the penalties on big billboards and then put it in community gathering areas. When someone is being accused, $500 pot fine, it's just stated right there. So when anything happens, they will just use, you see, just look at the platform. I'm in the billboard. So there's no one being feeling being individual responsibility because it's a community sort of thing. And then some individual civil society organizations are building safe houses. That's one of the safe house that I went to and then I talked to some of the survivors there. And when I asked the owner of the safe house, he said, I look after these survivors from my own pocket from what I had because my father is a leader and he looked after a lot of people in my community. And when I saw mother and children running around aimlessly, I am feeling that I have a duty to play. So that's why he set up this safe house and then he's funding it and then he's, you know, very rarely the government come on board to support. And most of the time it's the NGOs who are keeping their eyes on. And the other side is another photo that we are also training the police, the young police officers coming up in the colleges. And I was asked to give a talk on sorcery in one of the police training in Beaumona police college. And this is actually one of the examples that I want to share as a research researcher at the National Research Institute. When you look at the first photo on the other side, there's three mother being accused with seven kids. They have seven kids and they were chased out of the community by their family. And then there's a church pastor who took those family and then they sheltered them at the small booth material house at the back of the photo. And they've been living there. And when I asked them, they said that they don't know where to go because we have no place to go. After the research, I come back, I wrote the article and I put it on our main print media, past the 10 kitchen into S.A.R.F.I. Refuge. And through some of these findings, I go to the media and I talk on the now FM, the main radio that we have in the country. So that's more or less what I have been doing as a researcher in this space. I go collect data, get the information, put it in newspapers, produce articles, write reports and then sometimes I have to come up to the media and tell the people, this is what's happening, this is how we have to go. And below, good that now government is taking up, taking on both some of these issues. So now NRI is collaborating with the Department of Police to train them on some of the laws that they have to impose to address sorcery. And one of them was Ruth Menzem, the Glassman Abil. Glassman is the diviner, someone who's been consulted to point someone who is the cause, who is the sorcerer among the group. So now we are trying to address those people. And in that category, the judges also comes in that because they sort of like playing a diviner role by identifying people, who is doing what. So they are also eligible to be prosecuted. So those are some of the photos that we took. And the last one is we also present our report to the donor agencies who have been funding the research project like UNDP, the photo on the left and right side. So those are some of the things that the research group is doing in the space of sorcery. To conclude, to address sorcery-related violence in the country, we really need an integrated approach because we still need the awareness aspect of it in the communities, in the rural settings, also in the schools because our kids have to grow up in a different mindset. And we also need to have the health people to play a very crucial role because almost 80% of the accusations are because of sick and death, who people have no idea, because of lack of knowledge. They also result to a sorcery. So because of we have such an integrated plan in place already, we have that platform, but we need more funding and we need more people to come on board to drive some of this aspect to addressing itself, like A&US come on board to fund the research that we have been doing, which is a major contribution for the government. And now we are sharing those findings for the government to make an informed decisions. So that's more or less the conclusion, the recommendation. I want to speak a little bit more because we need more research data focused on the post-violence lives of victims. Now we need to do a lot more prevention rather than responding. In the last decade, it seems like when there is a violence, everyone come on board to respond. But this time we need a lot more prevention. And I think more support and funding is needed for prevention areas like health awareness, education, and also like sentencing male behavior change programs. Those are very important programs that can assist in the area. And then we also need support for the dedicated office that has a focus on sorcery, related violence, and work to coordinate resets and government responses. At the moment we have no coordinated data on self or socially-existing related violence. So those NGOs and other organizations doing something related to sorcery in that space, they're giving data. And sometimes there's fear that we may have multiple data of the same incident. That's why we need a data hub in this area so that we really master the impacts and the strengths that are happening related to sorcery. And also we need more prevention, as I have mentioned, rather than response. And then coordinated and integrated funding for SNAP is the crucial issue. Now we have revived the National Action Plan, and then we have the integrated one that will be launched. I think Groot may correct me, but I think we have done the last review of it, so it will come out soon, the last National Action Plan. So I hope I'm not taking too much, but when I talk about sorcery, I go and go and go and go, and I don't know how to stop it. So thank you very much. Thank you, William. Thank you to both of you. I mean, there's a, if you Google William's name, you'll see that he's contributed to a number of research reports, but he's also contributed to something, a story map that the Australian National University have developed, which lays out in sort of visual and very compelling detail. The scale of Sorcery Acquisition-related violence, and it acknowledges that it's probably an under-report of the scale. Six people are killed, and a further 23 suffer serious harm, including permanent injury as a result of Sorcery Acquisition-related violence each month. And what I think was great about your presentation, I'll invite Paige to think about this, is that in some ways the problem is there, Paige, but also the sort of answers are there as well, because you've got the greatest resource in Papua New Guinea, or its people, and then the work that William has laid out there. So I'd invite you to make some observations and remarks, and then we've got some time for questions for people in the room, or for people who are watching and joining us online. Thank you, Paige. Thanks. Thank you all so much, and thank you, colleagues, for these incredible presentations. I will be very brief, so we have a lot of time to ask questions. I want to start with something that Gordon said at the beginning about tribal fighting and Sorcery Acquisition-sounding to some outsider ears as something from the past. These, indeed, as my colleagues have shown, are things that happened in the past. You know, historically, these were part of what we might think of as the total social fact of many of these cultures. They were part of the fabric of culture. What you've heard today, though, is something new. It is something different. Historically, there were rules for engagement. Historically, people were not tortured, and that's a key thing. Torture is something that is new to Papua New Guinea. The torture of children is something that is new to Papua New Guinea. So these historic practices that were part of traditional Indigenous culture and holding the fabric of society together, the way that we're hearing about them today, the way that they're happening today, this is something new. I want to switch from talking about them being something new and different today to talking about the fact that they're external drivers for this. There's a kind of tendency, particularly when you're new to a place, to think, oh, well, this is a really violent place. This must be inherent to the culture. Absolutely not. This violence is new, and the external drivers include some of the things that my colleagues have talked about. The lack of resources, the lack of services, a new kind of economic inequality that did not exist historically anywhere in Papua New Guinea. Anywhere in Melanesia, the kind of economic inequality we see today simply did not exist. These are societies that redistribute wealth. That's not happening today. We also see land shortages today in part because of conflict in places, but in part because there have been major natural disasters that we all know are not natural at all. They have to do with climatic change. We also have an increasing number of climate refugees that are pushing the boundaries of what these societies can deal with themselves. There's election-related violence, as we've seen. This is not about this not being a thriving democracy. It is that, but there are resources that are spread around during elections that people want to grab onto because of that increasing economic inequality. We also have, for the first time in this country, over the past 15 or 20 years, a kind of a youth culture where young people don't have job opportunities. One of the things that happens in Papua New Guinea is students that can go to school, go to school, and they get home to their village, and there's nothing for them to do. There are no jobs. There's no work, and that's a kind of driver for this sort of thing. The other thing that I think we've heard today, or what I would think of, and what Ruth Kisson, one of our colleagues, has referred to as sadistic torture, and sadistic torture comes into the imaginary of young Papua New Guineans and others through the media. This is not something that Papua New Guineans are producing. They're not producing violent films that show the rape and torture of women and children. They're not producing violent internet memes. They're not producing violent video games. I think we, as Americans, know where that comes from, and so I think we need to think about these sort of sadistic images that come into the country. I want to switch to talking a little bit about how we also heard about some really important historic forms of restorative justice. In the United States, we talk a lot about restorative justice in our own communities, and especially over the past four years, we've done that. I want to think with you about the way that our colleagues have shown that there are forms of restorative justice, peace-building, treaty negotiation, compensation, and conflict resolution that are indigenous forms of restorative justice, and we need to flip the narrative and start talking about this in terms of indigenous restorative justice. We also need to flip the narrative and think about it in terms of indigenous diplomacy in situ. The folks that are making decisions to stop fighting in tribal violence areas that Elizabeth told us about, these are indigenous diplomats. They may not have gone to George Washington University. They may not have gone to my university, but these are people with deep training in indigenous philosophy, and we need to honor that and support it. The other thing that I think I want to talk about briefly are the cascading effects of this violence. You know, we've heard about this from both of my colleagues, but these cascading effects, there are victims, multiple victims. There are the families of victims. There are the families of families of victims. There are people who are displaced, but honestly the researchers who are working on this are part of this cascading form of violence. This is traumatic material to work on. This is traumatic material to know about. The peace builders who are going into these conflict areas, the church leaders who are working on this, the people who are risking their lives to rescue women and children, this is an incredible cauldron of post-traumatic stress disorder, and we need to think about how to combat that. I want to end with saying something about how, even though we've heard about this incredible violence in the country, Papua New Guinea, most extraordinary place in the world, people are kind. They are loving. They are brilliant. There's a kind of deep care for others and communities. So while this is a problem, an entrenched problem in society, please don't leave this thinking that Papua New Guinea is only a place of violence and this kind of torture and this kind of fighting. It's an incredible place. And then as an American citizen, if I got to make the rules, which I know that I don't, but I know some of you that are in this room and watching you do get to make the rules, I would just echo something that William said. We need integrated responses. I know that donors like to fund tiny little bits of things and that you have big donors that fund the smaller donors. I know that you're working across nations, but these problems are not disentanglable. These problems are entangled and we need to fund at a level where we understand entanglement. The other thing I would say is something to echo Dame Meg Taylor who we were honored to have here last week. You know, Dame Meg Taylor has been working on relations with the United States for decades. I've known her for almost 30 years and I've heard her say every single time I've heard her talk about what the United States government can do, we have such an architecture for higher education in this country. I don't just say that as someone who teaches at a university. I'm not here asking you for funds from my institution, but you know, we do higher ed really well. What if we had hundreds of scholarships for Papua New Guineans to come here to the United States and then to move back into systems of addressing this kind of violence in their country? So thank you all very much. Thank you, Paige. I mean, I think that's just a wonderful way to sort of segue into talks, but the importance of sort of getting behind things that are there already. Sometimes there's a tendency that we all think, oh, there's nothing there, we need to start again or we need to do a design. Actually, what Williams told us and what you've amplified is that there are plans, integrated plans, there are people that are doing this work. It's a matter of almost sort of figuring out what it is and supporting it. So thank you for that. So we've got about 15 minutes, which is, thank you to the timekeeping of our colleagues. We've got about 15 minutes for people in the room and for people online. My colleague Megan is with a microphone and she's got her phone in her hands, which strikes me that there's comments coming online. So Megan, please. Yeah, so we have a lot of comments from online. There's both about causes of violence and responses. So I'll start on the causes side. One of them is asking about economy and asking about correlation between increase and decrease of income of a breadwinner and SARV. And then there's another question asking about the role of the trade of guns, especially high-powered weapons in feeling violence in P&G. And if there's a need for more research into that question. Okay. I mean, the guns that you're I think is a really, is a really important one and one that you touch upon in your observations. Elizabeth, you want to come back to what you say, you know, the police and the military are somehow part of the solution, but they also part of the problem as well. And this porous border, which is about that, I think that like almost like the west coast of the United States in terms of the size of the border. And there's one border post, one official border post. So it'd be great to talk about guns. And then maybe William, you could talk a little bit about the economic impact of this really expensive country. Okay. So yeah, guns come in and guns are accessed by people with money. I can't afford one. Most ordinary people can't afford one. So, you know, it's people with money who are able to access it. And there's so many of them. People see them during elections. I will talk about an incident a few weeks before I came here, I did some research in the western border close to the border. And I spoke to people who are from the other side who come across to Papua New Guinea. And the governments allocated a piece of land to them as refugee camp. And they live there, but they're among them are traditional border crosses who peddle on canoes to the other side and come. And I asked them, how do you go? And they said, oh, we just follow the fly river. And there's little crates that come in. So we go upstream. And that's not meant at all. There's so many of them up along the border. So it has to come through there because to a straight side, it's meant by the Australians. On the plane, you go through security checks. So it has to come through there. It probably comes through the main border as well. You never know. And how else would it come in? It doesn't get like dropped from the air. And leaders will not say it because they accumulate. When they're going to elections, I come from the highlands and William and Ruth. And it's a violent time during elections. And that's when weapons do come out. Weapons are used in tribal fights. In the recent incident where the Australian academic and the researchers were kidnapped, they used high-powered guns. And I'm not supposed to say this, but the guys who kidnapped, they used high-powered guns, which were nothing compared to what the police said. So we can't say they're not here. They are there. They've been used to kill innocent people in tribal fights. But they're not accessed or paid for by ordinary village people. And leaders will not accept responsibility. I can say that because I'm a researcher. I'm not but answerable to political leaders. And to do research on it will be quite difficult because those who have it will not say I've got it. I'm the person who paid for them. But yeah, it has to be some brief person who would do it. It would be difficult, I think, for me as a researcher, because they will not say I've got it. You only see it coming out than being used in tribal fights. During elections, they have them. They use them. But it is a big problem. Yeah. And the sort of issue about sort of the page alluded to it, just there's this expensive Papua New Guinea. It's one of the most expensive places I've ever been. And the costs seem to get higher and higher and higher. And the salaries seem to go lower and lower and lower. Is that an issue in terms of just the economic precarity that people live? Is that a contributing factor to Sorcery Acquisition-related violence to tribal fighting? I think one of the factors that contribute to that is because of those tribal fights and Sorcery Acquisition-related violence, people are migrating to the towns and cities. And when they migrate there, it's not because of they want to be employed or they want to do something, but they're just afraid of their own lives, so they have to move out. And that's where most of this horrible land in the islands are left empty. So that means there's a less number of people producing than the number of people consuming what we're producing. And Leyi and Potmosby and these town centers are building up. The population is far more increasing. And the supply is very low. The production is very low. So the prices are now going up. Even live in Potmosby is very expensive. That's because there are a lot of people coming in for no reasons because of this tribal fight, because in fear of their own lives, they have to come out. And if you will be traveling up in the mainland, you have this lot of horrible land that you can grow all vegetables, fruits, but only few are doing it. So that's another contributing factor that people just coming out and then they become defended. When they become dependent, and then you see the number of dependents are increasing and then we seem to be competing with the prices that are also going up. So that's also leaving us miserable to save up and then look into other areas that we have to look after in terms of ourselves, then in terms of the economy, and then contributing factors as we see. And also in terms of the guns smuggling, I was one of those observers in the field during the elections. And it's sort of like those top bureaucrats seem to calling people to pick up this gun and then you put the roadblock there and then look after this polling area and then it's sort of like the top level communication that is using the grassroots level in the communities. So to address that issue, we have to look at the top level, keep them in a perspective where they behave and then our grassroots innocent people will also come out of this sort of problem that we are into. Like the trouble fight that Elizabeth mentioned, my father was killed. The four of them, they are leaders. They were in a peace talk and then they were slaughtered. That doesn't happen in our cultural context before. It's the first time that we saw. So I have to place the four bodies in front of the police station and tell the police, the PPC, the provincial government that, see, before people might take the law into their own hands, you got to intervene, do something. And they did not timely, I mean, intervene. They did not come on board and almost about after two weeks the trouble fight erupted and then most about 10,000 plus homeless and then more than 80 people are dying. And then just yesterday they called me and said, now we stop because we have wiped out our enemies. The enemies have no more land. They don't have their houses. So now we invite the government to come to witness the ceasefire. So I said, okay, that's good. But tell the government that they have to stand by to prevent further escalation of the violence. So there are these sort of things going on. But because of those problems that people are now becoming dependent so much because of their migrating from place to place. Yeah. I was in Port Moresby in August. And I remember I was in a restaurant with some people from HELLA. HELLA is one of the provinces in the Highlands. It's one of the two provinces that the United States is focusing on under its strategy to prevent conflict and promote stability. And someone said, in a slightly offhand but telling ways, half of HELLA is in Port Moresby at the minute because of fears. So it's hard when you moderate a hybrid event because you're trying to figure out who's in the room and who's online. I'm going to see if anyone in the room would like to ask a question and then I'm going to do it to Megan. And so the briefer the question the better. And if no hands, I'll just put it on to Megan to ask some questions online. Megan. All right. So we have questions on responses. So one question is asking about is there any work being done on examining repairing traditional peacemaking methods? Another question is asking about do you think reestablishing and expanding village courts could help reinstate law and order? And then I think a good overall question. How would a holistic approach to sorcery violence address the difference between what people say are the reasons for committing violence and the wider problems that are contributing to that violence? Do you want to have a crack at it? I'll have a crack at the first one in terms of in situ responses to peace building. So yes, there are lots and lots and lots of individuals, lots of community based organizations, lots of NGOs that are working on kind of increasing reliance on traditional systems of peace building and traditional systems of conflict resolution. There is a very complicated answer to why those organizations don't get the money that they need. But a key take home point here is that those organizations and individuals absolutely do exist. Figuring out a way to get money to those organizations is part of what I hope can come out of this process with UISP and USAID moving back into the country. You know, I'll stop there and let my colleagues talk, but absolutely those groups exist. If you look at what's been happening out on Lavangar Island or New Hanover, all of the peace process there has been fomented by indigenous leaders. The government has picked up on the village courts because that's where the cultural norms and values are also taken on board when they make decisions in terms of conflict and issues. So I think the Australian government has funded the training for the village courts. And then they're sort of like taking on board a lot of those educated village court magistrates and village court officials because previously we have those elders and chiefs who own the village courts, but then they could not able to read the amendment acts, the laws that have been introduced to the village courts. So that's why there's a good initiative that we are now training the village court officials and then also trying to upgrade some of their roles to the extent where they can also take on board some of these issues. Even in the case of sorcery, if you're in possession of charms and all those other mediums that people suspected of you doing sorcery, the village courts can now mediate those cases in the village court level. So now the village courts are also stepping up, but we need a lot more because we haven't visited all the village courts in the country. And then that's an important area that we really need to tap in so that they are where the people are, and then they're widely spread in the country. But when you look at the formal courts like national court and district courts, it's just scattered. So most of the time you won't find them. So one of the great pleasures of moderating a USIP discussion is you get to listen to this sort of fascinating letters and stories from people who really know what they're talking about. One of the difficult things about moderating a USIP discussion has to end on time. So I'm going to conclude it now by thanking Elizabeth and William and Paige and everyone else that's in the room, and we'll have some time to ask our really just fascinatingly well informed and guests. Thank you, everyone.