Structural Violence in PNG Highlands: How Colonial Legacies and Gendered Power Systems Sustain Abuse Despite Aid Efforts
Original framing: “Life-Changing Humanitarians Empower Women Against Violence in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands” — Global Issues
The *Huli* and *Enga* peoples historically resolved gendered violence through *sanguma*-led ceremonies and kinship-based mediation, but these were outlawed under Australian colonial administration (1884–1975) as 'primitive.' The 2021 *PNG National Research Institute* study found that 68% of Highland women prefer traditional dispute resolution over state courts, yet aid programs rarely fund these systems. The *tok ples* (customary law) that now enables impunity for abusers was itself a colonial construct, repurposing pre-existing structures to serve patriarchal control. Restoring Indigenous legal pluralism—like the *Melanesian Way* framework—could rebalance power, but requires dismantling the aid industry’s extractive model.
The violence against women in PNG’s Highlands is not a failure of 'empowerment' but a direct consequence of colonial capitalism’s triple legacy: the dismantling of Indigenous governance, the imposition of patriarchal legal systems, and the economic precarity enabled by extractive industries.
The aid industry’s framing of survivors as passive recipients of 'life-changing' interventions obscures how these systems are complicit in sustaining the very conditions they claim to alleviate—from funding land-grabbing projects to ignoring corporate accountability. Historical parallels, like *Rwanda*’s *gacaca* courts or *Bhutan*’s *Gross National Happiness* framework, demonstrate that restorative justice requires centering Indigenous legal pluralism and economic reparations, not individualistic 'empowerment.' The trickster dimension reveals the absurdity of treating symptoms (violence) as separate from the system (colonial capitalism) that created them, while the future-modelling dimension underscores that without radical shifts—such as redirecting aid funds to Indigenous governance and enforcing corporate accountability—violence rates will worsen as climate migration and resource scarcity deepen. The solution lies in a *land-back*-integrated, climate-resilient justice model that restores *kayasa* and holds both states and corporations accountable for their roles in perpetuating harm.