PNG Must ​Prohibit Polygamous Marriage as it Segregates Gender

By  Petrus GAND

We should not turn a blind eye on the issues affecting the lives of our mothers and sisters, nor shall we sit and spectate.

The UNO and its institutions such as WHO and Amnesty International envisioned that every person must enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

Women, Peace and Security activities are not standalone efforts but an integral part of regional peace and security discussions, in line with regional efforts of promoting gender equality.

But the modern state, combined with some enduring aspects of traditional cultures and Christianity, has perpetuated patriarchal beliefs, ideas, attitudes and institutions. This facilitates gender inequality to be a societal norm. It may be an existential-threat on the lives of females, it is also overlooked and socially accepted.  

Dating for money or self-sustainability and polygamous marriage are common practises surrounded within the parcel of indirect-prostitution. With prostitution comes organised crimes such as human (women, girls and children) trafficking, the transmission of STIs, including HIV/AIDS and ancillary crimes such as acts of GBV and forced and marital rape.  

Human trafficking accompanies gender disparity because of male superiority. Females are reportedly subjected to sex trafficking by members of their immediate family or tribe. Parents force their daughters into marriages or child sex-trafficking to settle debts or to support their families.

Tribes around PNG present girls as rewards to war lords and mercenaries during tribal war-fares, while a customary obligation involves a ‘bride price’ of money paid to the wife's family by the husband's family. This is sometimes used as a debt to compel women to remain in abusive or servile marriages, which increases the probability of polygamous marriage and related consequences. 

As in the 2019 incident of Jenelyn Kennedy, she was just 19 and a mother of two children brutally murdered, allegedly by her partner in Port Moresby. She had an intimate marriage with her husband despite her husband’s multiple partners. She deliberately exposed to the harms she encountered. Eventually it ended with her life being squeezed-out by the hands of her husband.  

While gender discrepancy being socially accepted, it is statistically heightened yet furiously life-threatening. The Criminal Code Amendment Act 2013 criminalised most forms of sex trafficking and all forms of labour trafficking, although there is no law that interdicts both polygamy and polyandry marriages, which obstructs gender equality not only legally and socially but psychologically as well.   

All of which accumulates in erupting a socio-economic security agenda that undermines females’ rights and participation at the community level to the national, whereby the need to foster active role of females in parliament remains an unsolved concern.

Petrus GAND

Social-Justice-Advocate

Email:[email protected] 

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