Improving the impact of state and non-state interventions in overcoming sorcery accusation related violence in PNG

Project leaders: Dr Miranda Forsyth (Australian National University), Dr Fiona Hukula (PNG National Research Institute), Dr Philip Gibbs (Divine Word University)

Date: September 2016 – June 2020

Funded by: Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development

Sorcery related violence is spreading sorcery-related violence “like wildfire”. “I am appealing to my elected leaders in parliament to come up with a constructive law to deal with sorcery in our country. It is now getting out of hand.” Enga Province Police Deputy Commander, Epenes Nili, 25 May 2015[1]

Background

Sorcery accusation related violence is seen as a growing problem in PNG and has attracted domestic and international calls for an effective government response. It is implicated in a range of negative developmental outcomes, including economic disempowerment, poor health, insecurity, persecution, and violence including torture and murder. Moreover, these negative outcomes impact disproportionately upon women. In 2012, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women found that women in parts of PNG constantly fear being accused of sorcery[2] and that more women than men are tortured and murdered as a result of sorcery accusations.[3] Women who lack male protection—widows and older women with no offspring, women born out of wedlock, and women living at a distance from kin—are more vulnerable to sorcery accusations.[4] Female victims of sorcery accusations also tend to face greater economic deprivation than men as a result of being banished from their communities and separated from their networks of care.

In response to the calls for action to deal with this problem, both the government and a broad range of civil society, faith based and international organisations have started to put into place legislative reforms, projects and programs to address the problem. As a result, there currently are a whole range of non-state actors (community organisations, civil society, church organisations, UN organisations) that are developing and implementing interventions to break the link between sorcery accusation and violence. However, the evidence about which of these interventions are working and why, and how they can best be supported, and support each other, is still very thin.

The PNG government is clear that it wants this violence curbed, but lacks the capacity to implement its regulatory objectives through an exclusive reliance on the preventative and deterrent effects of the state criminal justice system. In partial recognition of this, the government, led by the Department of Justice and Attorney General, together with a range of partner organisations, have developed a Sorcery National Action Plan (“SNAP”) which sets out a comprehensive and holistic response to the problem (Forsyth 2014). The SNAP was approved by the NEC on 16 July 2015.   The SNAP provides for the development of training packages for a wide range of service providers and local community governance structures, but at present the research is lacking to identify what types of training is needed and likely to be effective.

Project description

The SNAP specifically calls for evidence-based research to be conducted to support the implementation of the different objectives identified in the plan. The particular objectives this proposal directly targets are in the legal and protection section of the SNAP, including:

• Ensure that cases involving sorcery and witchcraft accusation related violence go through the criminal justice system;
• Develop a strategy for mediating sorcery and witchcraft related accusation at community level (noting that these may look very different from place to place); and
• Develop mechanisms and awareness to ensure that the general population and service providers know what the law is, who has responsibility and authority to act, and how they can be contacted and mobilized.

Research on sorcery was also identified as a key component of the implementation strategy to address gender based violence in the National Policy for Women and Gender Equality 2011-2015. The project will also be heavily action-research focussed as it will monitor and critique the implementation of the SNAP and associated interventions.

This project will provide crucial research findings that will be able to inform the roll out of the SNAP. This project will support PNG partners to address sorcery accusation related violence by developing and communicating a body of evidence regarding which interventions to break the link between sorcery and violence are working and why, and how they can best be supported.

Specifically, the objectives of this project are to:

• map the terrain to build the evidence-base
• support evidence-based training and awareness programs in accordance with the SNAP
• inform policy frameworks and research agendas
• build and strengthen institutional linkages between SSGM and key PNG institutions working in this area

This project will investigate a range of interventions by the state and non-state actors and institutions (such as customary and local organisations, churches, the private sector and civil society) in overcoming the violence associated with accusations of sorcery in PNG. These research insights will then be used to assist key stakeholder partners, such as the Department of Justice and Attorney General (DJAG), Family and Sexual Violence Action Committee (FSVAC) and Centre for Social and Creative Media (CSCM), in developing training packages and awareness materials as required in the SNAP. The research conducted in this project will be complemented by an action research process conducted by CSCM that will use drama and visual methods to explore community narratives around sorcery as will be further developed in their separate proposal.

The project will also have a mapping/ analysis component that will involve research to determine the geographical areas of PNG in which men are predominantly victims of sorcery accusations and in which women are predominantly victims, and also where accusations lead to violence and where they do not; and assess these against other factors such as levels of violence in general, types of churches, economic changes, and cultural traditions of sorcery and witchcraft (there are places where people are saying “this is new for us” and others where people say “this is our history/ culture”). This mapping exercise will provide an important perspective on some of the drivers behind sorcery accusations and violence and also generate data on changes over time.

While focused primarily on the problem of sorcery accusation related violence, this research will also be an important way to test whether holistic problem-solving approaches, entailing coordinated interventions by state and non-state actors, can assist in addressing the broader challenges of violence facing PNG, and also identify best practices in so doing (see Ferguson, Errington and Haley 2013: 16-17).

The project will also build and strengthen institutional linkages between SSGM and key institutions in this area, in particular FSVAC, National Research Institute (NRI), Divine Word University, and DJAG.

The project will utilise two main frames of reference: an individual case (micro-analysis) framework and also a systems or institutions level framework that focusses on how the different institutions working in the area relate to and support, or undermine, each other.

Individual case-study framework

We propose to examine the types of interventions by both state and non-state actors that are aimed at stopping the link between sorcery accusation and violence. This research will help to allow us to understand why sorcery accusations lead to violence in some parts of PNG and not in others. The case study research will be provided to CSCM who will utilise the information to design an action research approach to create targeted communication strategies in collaboration with communities.

Institution/systems level framework

The hypothesis of this project is that maximising the benefits of the range of non-state actors and other state departments involved in the new holistic and comprehensive response will depend upon the nature of the linkages between the criminal justice system and these actors. In order to examine the operation of these linkages in practice, and to consider how they can best be strengthened (or if they need to be), this project will focus on the Village Courts, which have been identified by the PNG government and the SNAP as central to the regulatory response. In particular, the project will investigate the vertical linkages that the Village Courts have up through the state criminal justice system and other governments departments, and down to village level governance and conflict management, and the various horizontal linkages they have with a whole range of non-state actors working on this problem. This concept, in simplified form, can be seen in the diagram below.

This focus on the village courts will also be an important occasion to investigate the extent to which these courts protect women from sorcery related violence (and in general), and what types of assistance most effectively assists them in doing so, both areas where more research is critically needed (see Ferguson, Errington and Haley 2013: 6-7).

Research questions

Most of the research will operate in parallel with that of CSCM, and some research questions will be answered in conjunction with CSCM (indicated in bold italics below).

What regulatory levers exist to overcome SARV in what context do they work and what relationships are needed between them?

Documenting SNAP as a coalition for change network building and documenting its impact:

1. Who is being accused of sorcery, where, why, how often, by whom, and how does this change over time? (and why?)

2. Why do accusations lead to violence at times and not at others?

3. What regulatory levers exist to overcome sorcery accusation related violence, and what is the context or conditions necessary for them to work effectively?

4. How is the PNG Sorcery National Action Plan (“SNAP”) working as a coalition for change network?  What are its impacts, failures and challenges?

These are preliminary research questions which will be refined and altered over time in response to the emerging findings. These research questions address research gaps and priorities identified in the SNAP and the two conferences that led up to the SNAP.

Support for the SNAP through the project

This project will provide crucial research findings that will be able to inform the roll out of the SNAP, in particular through working with FSVAC and DJAG which have the primary responsibilities for implementing the activities under the plan.

The particular training and awareness programs that are set out under the SNAP that this project will feed into are the following parts of SNAP

1. “Formulate and produce informative materials in a variety of formats (print media, social media, theatre productions etc) addressing:

• The need to break the link between sorcery accusations and violence
• the effects of sorcery accusation related violence on families, children and communities
• the legislation and related penalties
• the fact that torture does not lead to reliable confessions
• relevant human rights laws and declarations (e.g. 1948 UDHR) (with FSVAC and DJAG)

1. Development of a joint National Communication Strategy to disseminate key messages for key partners to implement
2. Targeted workshops in Districts /communities with very key messages that the perpetrators of sorcery violence in the communities are the accusers and not the suspected sorcerers
3. Develop a training program for paralegals (such as the village courts officials, police and other service providers) to better allow them to act as entry points into the justice system for cases of sorcery and witchcraft related violence. This should include the development of a simple flowchart that explains in clear terms: what the law is, what to do in what situations, contact points, basic human rights under the constitution, and also include a communications strategy.
4. Training program for volunteers (those involved in mediation at the village level, such as ward and committee members, community leaders, chiefs, church leaders) to do mediation below the village courts, raise awareness about the law and social issues related to sorcery accusation violence, direct people to the right places for assistance and disseminate legal information.
5. Research into effective community level mediation strategies and interventions that are currently being used (community leaders, elected ward members, clan leaders, church leaders, peace officers, community police etc) to deflect sorcery accusation violence and other types of violence and their potential for expansion into other areas; and the development of training programs and support mechanisms based on these findings.
6. Expansion of national judicial training (including village court justices) training material to include issues on sorcery related violence and the process of seeking Interim Protection Order (IPOs) by those in imminent danger of sorcery related violence;
7. Training on issue of sorcery related violence for specialized units within the Police Force (FSVAC and RPNGC).
8. Training on sorcery accusation related violence and human rights to be integrated into police training curriculum (FSVAC and RPNGC).
9. Develop legal literacy programs in schools and amongst the community, involving a series of legal literacy pamphlets/ radio program/ talk back programs/ facebook and other social media on a range of different topics that provide clear information about the law and people’s rights (particular issues involve interim and permanent protection orders, what to do if village courts do not enforce their orders)”[5]

The project outputs will also feed into the following policy frameworks and research agendas that are anticipated to be developed under the SNAP:

• “Standard operating procedures be developed to enable temporary relocation of survivors and their relatives for safety reasons, and their re-integration into their own community or an alternative community (FSVAC and DJAG)
• Strengthen the Peace & Good order networks for ongoing mediation & counselling for those who remain in their current exposure locations (DJAG)
• Develop practice guidelines for Police to ensure the safety of targets of sorcery accusation related violence and circulate them to all Provincial Police Commanders (PPCs) (RPNGC)
• Gap analysis of what provisions are required to be re-enacted to deal with sorcery accusation related violence. In particular:
  • sorcery accusations
  • incitement to violence
  • threats and profiting from fear of sorcery
  • if and where and how cases of killing and harm through sorcery be dealt with
• Research to investigate the linkages between the different levels of conflict resolution from village level to the national court system.” [6]

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-25/png-police-yet-to-initiate-probe-into-sorcery-murder/6495252

[2] (A/HRC/23/49/Add.2: 9, item 34

[3] A/HRC/23/49/Add.2: 9

[4] (A/HRC/23/49/Add.2: 9, items 34 and 36; see Gibbs 2012

[5] Sorcery and Witchcraft Accusation Related Violence – National Action Plan, April 2016.

[6] Sorcery and Witchcraft Accusation Related Violence – National Action Plan, April 2016.