 Joining us today here in the USIP studios is Mr. Gordon Peake. He's an author and expert on all things Pacific Islands amongst other things and specifically he knows a lot about Papua New Guinea. Gordon, thank you for joining us today. Thanks Andrew, nice to be here. For us today, could you please help explain how instability, insecurity and fragility uniquely manifest in Papua New Guinea? Sure, it's great to be here Andrew and really grateful for the opportunity and really enjoyed the trip that we made to Papua New Guinea, which is a place that for many Americans is a real kind of far away over the horizon sort of place. We're asleep whenever they're awake, we're awake whenever they're asleep. It's half of the second largest island in the world, the island of New Guinea. It's to our flight from Australia and it's got a really unique kind of colonial legacy as well. You've got a challenge of a state that has a limited reach, a state that has aspirations to do a lot but has a fairly limited reach. You have a challenge of a growing population and you have the challenge of an everyday lack of sort of economic development that you can see there. So when we were in P&G we traveled into some of the settlements kind of you know shanty areas you would say in other contexts where a lot of Papua New Guineans live and they go there looking for work and they don't find work and I think that's one of the greatest everyday challenges that Papua New Guineans faced and that manifests then in lots of everyday security challenges. Other challenges are relate to what you would probably sort of character most sometimes gets glossed as tribal fighting which sometimes glossed as one group contesting against another, challenges over resources, challenges that relate to you know sort of broader socioeconomic development and also Papua New Guinea has got a unique challenge because it has in 2019 just before the world ended or seemed to sort of shut down because of COVID a set of islands on the eastern fringe of Papua New Guinea called Bougainville voted in a referendum and 97.7% of Bougainvillians voted in that referendum to secede from Papua New Guinea. Only South Sudan has a referendum where a higher number of people voted to secede so you've got a number of challenges you've got everyday challenges of insecurity that kind of manifest in places like Port Moresby the Capitol it's a place where there's a kind of heavy kind of private security presence where there's not a lot of people feel comfortable walking the streets but you've also got these kind of broader political challenges that are facing the place as well a want-away region and then the potential what the Papua New Guinea government worries about is they kind of domino effect that might come with that now whether that's a warranted concern or not is another matter but you've got this a whole kind of accordion full of challenges and a state that's not particularly well prepared to meet them. You started off by saying you know there's limitations to state authority and that leads to some of the problems we see with security and governance issues. Can you tell us more about where these problems are in the country and how this might lead to violence that the Papua New Guineans have been seeing over the past years? Yeah I mean it's a good question. I often think it's a useful way to think about Papua New Guinea almost sort of through sort of two lenses one of which is through the thinking of the kind of formal state and if you think of the formal state you don't really it's caused for kind of discouragement in a way because the state is limited when you actually go to go to the offices of the state sometimes you find that there's not a lot of people that are there you find that there's lots of kind of boxes and files and activities but not a lot of people that are there and it's a state that isn't delivering very very much for its people and that kind of manifests as well at the same time and it's really important to recognize that Papua New Guinea is not the kind of the bleak story that we sometimes think that it is it's a place of tremendous resilience which is a buzzword that is used to use too much but I think in this case it's actually warranted and that's because underneath the state and working through the state are these kind of thousands and thousands of kind of river rivers or rivulets of personal relationships and it's personal relationships that keep the country running in the in the way that it does and it kind of stops start chugging along in perfect sort of way but the challenge I think for kind of that then presents a South Andrew for for kind of countries like United States or country like Australia that are kind of wanting to work on fragility challenges is sometimes we automatically think we kind of see like states we kind of think oh we need to kind of work with the state in order to kind of address fragility concerns whereas actually the greatest source of strength in Papua New Guinea is is sort of beyond the state there are you know we met some of them on our on our trip we met there's thousands tens of thousands of kind of unsung heroes that are doing often unpaid work they're working with helping victims of violence they're helping victims of kind of sorcery accusation related violence which is a sort of major growing problem in the country if we'll talk about that going up but they're helping kind of lay little bridges between each other in order for the place to to work the way that it does local partnership is really important but sometimes we kind of see like states we know we look towards you know the Department of Defense looks towards the Defense Forces and PNG that the FBI might look towards the police the challenge in a place like PNG is we've got to kind of look beyond our kind of our kind of traditional blinkers and see that the source of strength there and the sort of areas to work with is within this kind of relationality this relational state that exists and you and I saw that you and I saw that when we were when we were there we traveled to a a place the second city of Papua New Guinea which is lay kind of reminds me but a Pittsburgh is sort of industrial place with a kind of sort of dine-at-heel sort of charm to it and we met communities that were actively and practically working to try to sort of snuff out violence that that was occurring now they weren't work they were sometimes working with the state but they were often kind of working off their own bat not being paid not really being recognized by the state and these are the kind of communities that are actually kind of working really productively and actively to stop violence indeed we visited some remarkable communities and met some remarkable people and to that and to the point of activities being locally led and partnerships being really centered around the the partners and the countries we're trying to help can you explain a little bit about the unique sort of culture and traditions and customs in in Papua New Guinea and and what that means for for partnering with them two things I think are really are really important the first is the importance of and sometimes we is kind of you know thinking it through Western lenses don't don't think this way we think there's something kind of wrong with this but but the importance of clan and tribe they've got these sort of huge family family units that look out for each other and it means that there's I mean I remember someone said to me that there's one of the reasons why you see very few homeless people in Papua New Guinea is that there's these tremendously strong family family units that kind of look out for each other that support each other and say if you're in employment sometimes kind of take a lot of money from you because it's a kind of communal communal society but that's one of the great and sometimes we as kind of Westerns and clans they kind of think oh the clan the tribal there's something kind of you know wrong about that but actually oh contrary it's one of the great sources of strength that is that is in the country and we saw that in our work as well which is people just practically and actively caring for their caring for their their kin the second source of strength that's worth mentioning and sometimes certainly in a place you know like I've come from Ireland originally but I lived a lot of my life in the southern hemisphere in Australia which is a fairly a religious place is that Christianity plays a really important rule in in in Papua New Guinea it plays a really important sort of fostering community rule and it also provides a set of kind of language and kind of rubrics that enable resolutions or enable sort of pathways to kind of maybe not resolve conflict but in order to kind of sort of talk about conflict in a way so let me give you one example PNG has got a a just a terrible problem with violence against women somewhere between sort of 60 to 70 percent of women have suffered some form of sexual violence in their lives if I remember the statistics correctly traditionally donors have worked with the victims of domestic violence and that's completely correct and appropriate so by providing safe houses provide providing hospital care for those as well but a number of these kind of unsung heroes these kind of peace builders that we talk about people who don't really get a lot of attention because they're they're kind of squirreled away and living in kind of settlements and sort of far away from the tarmac road they started using the language or they sort of say well it's it's really important that we work with victims of domestic violence but that's addressing the the symptoms and not the cause and the cause of domestic violence in kind of 99.99 percent of cases is man often the kind of disenfranchised man that we spoke about earlier on who are kind of just unhappy at their socioeconomic lot and especially in a country that's kind of it's a pretty expensive country as well it's an expensive country to make ends meet and so these kind of unsung peace builders have taken to using kind of Bible verse and a kind of theology and sort of theological concepts in order to kind of work with men in order to try to get at what are the sources of their of their kind of frustration their their rage I did I did also take note that that there was recent violence and instability related to the elections yeah and could you tell us a little bit more about that it's a winner-take-all system and it means that it's really important because if you get into Parliament you get accesses access to resources and resources means that you can build your build your political power and then you can reward your supporters and so that means it's incredibly tense time in a winner- take-all system it's like the US system there's a winner and there's a loser there's no proportional representation there for you to get into Parliament and that creates a kind of flashpoint and a kind of source of you know an open wound that kind of continues all through this election process because like in any elections going to be one winner there's going to be plenty of losers so that's sort of problem number one couple that with the fact that you've got a you've got a kind of rickety sort of out-of-date sort of imperfect you know pick your you know pick your kind of sliding skill of comments about it electoral rule which means that that many Papua New Guineans some estimates nearly as many as half of Papua New Guineans that we await the kind of results of election of so observation on this we're not able to vote so you can imagine just what a how you know frustrating that would be the challenge is sort of how you go about kind of addressing that and one of the tricky challenges I think is how do you convince Papua New Guineans political leader or the people who've kind of won the election or kind of you know got into power that it's in their interests to you know to change that it's I think that's one of the kind of the you know the the issues that's kind of going forward and we could see in our time in in lay Andrew some of the kind of hangovers off that off that violence was taking place we had a security guard in in in lay and he told us you know after we held a community meeting where the community talked about how some homes had been burnt he said yeah you know I was one of those people who had their their homes burnt so you know violence can come and losing really important things in your life can come really really close to home to flip it around in another way we know that there's going to be an election in 2027 there's not going to be an earlier election it's sort of constitutionally mandated to happen every five years to me that's a kind of golden opportunity to actually sort of have a kind of time horizon in front of you and think I think you know think how can one put work on this again though I think it'll also be one of these kind of litmus tests as well with the Papua New Guinean political lead are they interested in kind of changing the system because there's an argument that some of it of this kind of system kind of suits them because they emerge as winners of it so we would be remiss not to talk about what you what you opened one of the aspects that you open with and that is the issues surrounding the Boganville political process and and I must mention that you have a book coming yes I would be remiss and not pointing out that I have a book coming on Boganville so please could you just tell us about this this this crisis as they call it and the peace process that followed and where we are now it is the lot was the largest scale conflict in the Pacific since the Second World War and it had many drivers to it it had a sort of resource component to it it had kind of every day you know sort of rubs and annoyances that kind of sort boiled over but it also has an independent has a national nationalist kind of component to it as well a sense among Boganvillians that that they would be that they were different from elsewhere in Papua New Guinea so the conflict went from 1988 until sort of ceasefires and the sort of just stuff sort of 1997 1998 and culminated in a peace agreement in 2001 and the peace agreement is kind of relatively unique in a way because it has unlike a lot of peace agreements which are kind of implemented really quickly this one has been implemented over the course of the last 20 years three components the peace agreement the establishment of an autonomous government that was established in 2005 weapons disposal and a referendum on the on the region's political future it would be a as per the terms of the peace agreement which is again an unusual construction not unique because it's based on the the model that was used for East Timor there would be a non binding referendum and then the Parliament of Papua New Guinea would ultimately decide on on what would happen since the big question now is sort of what happens next and it's a question it was kind of a tidal wave of kind of not of sort of emotion and commitment among Boganvillians that kind of got them to the point where they were able to deliver this almost unanimous sort of peaceful referendum now it's a question of bureaucratic mechanics and kind of working out the process by which P&G and Boganville agree the terms of a divorce thank you Gordon for that thank you for your description of Boganville which which you know from my experience is a fascinating case study and for many parts of peace building the implementation of this this this peace agreement and thank you for painting this picture of Papua New Guinea which pointed out you know some of the struggles that they're having and definitely a fragile situation and violence and stability and but but seeds of hope no worries nice to be here