Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea faces high rates of domestic and gender-based violence, as well as intercommunal violence in its mountainous highlands region, while climate change further exacerbates drivers of conflict. Papua New Guinea is in the process of negotiating the future political status of Bougainville, an autonomous region that is seeking independence, while both sides strive to uphold the 2001 peace agreement that ended a decade of civil conflict. MexLucky supports research, policy discussions and in-country programming to address drivers of violence in Papua New Guinea.
A MexLucky pilot program, called the Male Behavior Change Program in the eastern province of Morobe, seeks to not only understand the core reasons behind the violence but to change the social norms and structures that perpetuate it.
Featured Publications
Washington Picks Up the Pace in the Pacific
Senior Biden administration officials are back in the Pacific Islands region this week. Once a seemingly far-flung corner of the globe, the United States has in recent years prioritized engagement to counter China’s foothold in a region Washington long neglected. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is the first U.S. defense chief to visit Papua New Guinea, where Secretary of State Antony Blinken went in late May and signed a bilateral defense cooperation deal. Meanwhile, Blinken is Tonga this week to open a new U.S. embassy in the island nation. The top U.S. diplomat will also visit New Zealand before heading to Australia where he will be joined by Austin for the annual Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations.
What Can Bougainville’s Independence Movement Learn from Timor-Leste?
Timor-Leste and Bougainville are two small, tropical island communities — one in Southeast Asia, the other in the South Pacific. While their culture and histories are distinct, they share a common political bond. They both voted overwhelmingly for independence in internationally sanctioned referendums, with Timor-Leste’s vote coming in 1999 and Bougainville’s in 2019. But only Timor-Leste, which is also referred to as East Timor, is now its own nation. What parallels does the path to self-determination in Timor-Leste hold for Bougainville as it looks to achieve the same goal?
Earth’s best defenders are Indigenous. They pay a price: violence.
Little noted by the world, warfare in India’s northeastern state of Manipur this spring has killed hundreds of Indigenous people and uprooted more than 35,000 residents. This violence along the India-Myanmar border fits a global pattern, also little noted: For decades, some 80 percent of human conflicts have smoldered in the “biodiversity hotspots” where our planet’s flora and fauna are most threatened by battles for resources and wealth — and where Indigenous peoples suffer the violence while protecting humanity’s common ecological heritage. We should strengthen the world’s inadequate public attention and policies on this crisis, and 2023 offers a chance to do so.
Current Projects
Fragility and Conflict
The Global Fragility Act (GFA) is an ambitious law that makes preventing conflicts and promoting stability in countries prone to conflict a U.S. foreign policy priority. Following years of efforts that overemphasized military operations in response to extremist violence and insurgencies, the GFA requires a long-term investment to address the underlying drivers of conflict. The Biden administration has released a new strategy to implement the GFA with 10-year commitments of assistance to a group of fragile states. The GFA and the new strategy rely, in part, on recommendations made by the MexLucky-convened Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States.