THE head of the United Nations in Papua New Guinea Roy Trivedy yesterday said he was shocked at the appalling rate of gender-based violence in the country.
While acknowledging that statistics on the rates of violence in PNG were still under a cloud and was an issue that the UN hoped to fix with the support of the Australian government, the UN diplomat said their work on gender-based violence is a major part of their program in the country. "I have worked and lived in many different places in the world, and in Papua New Guinea I am absolutely shocked by the level of violence, violence throughout society but violence particularly against women and girls," he said. "This is a major part of our work in PNG. We have a family sexual violence program working with the Ministry for Community Development with all of the government agencies in PNG. "The development challenges that currently face PNG and its people vary and include HIV/AIDS in some communities. However, incidences of gender-based violence appeared more common in PNG households," said Mr Trivedy. "As a pastor said in one of our provincial consultations, in our communities we know that probably one or two people are living with HIV/AIDS. But you know what, every single household here is dealing with gender-based violence. Every single household has some experience of it, that’s the scale that we are dealing with," he added at a breakfast meeting yesterday hosted by the PNG Coalition for Change. He asked guests at the breakfast to visit a photography exhibition at the National Parliament’s State Function Room by award-winning Russian photographer Vlad Sokhin, which he said exposed the pain and shocking realities of gender-based violence and sorcery killings. Comments are closed.
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