Papua New Guinea Issues - 2023

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES 

Disputes - international

Papua New Guinea-Australia: relies on assistance from Australia to keep out illegal cross-border activities from primarily Indonesia, including goods smuggling, illegal narcotics trafficking, and squatters and secessionists

Refugees and internally displaced persons

refugees (country of origin): 11,432 (Indonesia) (mid-year 2022)

IDPs: 24,000 (natural disasters, tribal conflict, inter-communal violence, development projects) (2021)

stateless persons: 15 (2022)

Trafficking in persons

tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List — Papua New Guinea does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so; for the first time in four years, the government initiated prosecutions against four alleged traffickers, and identified and provided protective services to a child sex trafficking victim; however, the government did not demonstrate overall increasing efforts compared to the previous year; officials did not convict any traffickers, nor provide shelter or services to victims or help NGOs do so; endemic corruption and complicity, particularly in the logging and fishing sectors, left foreigners and locals vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor; the lack of resources for anti-trafficking efforts, low awareness among officials and the public, and lack of training activities continued to hinder progress; the government did not update standard operating procedures for victim identification or allocate funding to its national action plan; therefore, Papua New Guinea remained on Tier 2 Watch List for the second consecutive year (2022)

trafficking profile: human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Papua New Guinea, and Papua New Guineans are exploited abroad; traffickers use Papua New Guinea as a transit point to exploit foreign victims in other countries; foreign and local women and children are exploited in sex trafficking and in forced labor in domestic service, the tourism sector, manual labor, begging, and street vending; families or tribe members reportedly exploit children in sex trafficking or forced labor; some parents force their daughters in to marriages or child sex trafficking to resolve debts or disputes; Chinese, Malaysian, and local men are forced to work in logging and mining camps; migrant women from Malaysia, Thailand, China, and the Philippines are subjected to sex trafficking and domestic servitude at logging and mining camps, fisheries, and entertainment sites (2022)

Illicit drugs

transit point for smuggling drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine; major consumer of cannabis

NOTE: The information regarding Papua New Guinea on this page is re-published from the 2023 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and other sources. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Papua New Guinea 2023 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Papua New Guinea 2023 should be addressed to the CIA or the source cited on each page.