Yearbook 2005
Papua New Guinea. According to countryaah, Port Moresby is the capital and one of the major cities within the country of Papua New Guinea. The Australian police force that had arrived in Papua New Guinea before New Year was questioned at the beginning of the year. Several hundred Papuan police protested the presence of Australian counterparts, claiming that it did not reduce the serious crime. In addition, legal objections were raised that the members of the visiting police force had, at the request of the Australian Government, been granted criminal immunity. In May, Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court ruled that immunity violated the Papuan Constitution. As a result, Australia was forced to take home its police force. It was a tough blow to Australian efforts to counter terrorism and organized crime in the region through military and police efforts in unstable neighboring states.
- Also see abbreviationfinder.org for how the acronym PG stands for the country of Papua New Guinea and other meanings of this two-letter abbreviation.
By the New Year, the province of Bougainville’s new constitution came into force, and the island gained considerable self-government. It was a result of the peace agreement signed in 2001 between the Papua New Guinea government and the Bougainville rebels following a protracted and bloody civil war. In May and June elections were held for the new self-government at Bougainville, partly a parliamentary assembly and partly a president. Former rebel leader Joseph Kabui won the presidential election. According to the constitution, a referendum on full independence must be held no earlier than 2014.
In a report in August, Human Rights Watch accused the Papuan police of torture, child abuse and sexual abuse, including group rape against girls and boys. In November, at least two schoolchildren were killed and 35 injured when police opened fire on stone-throwing children trying to prevent the headmaster at their school in the Highlands from being arrested.
Country data
Area: 462,840 km2 (world rank: 54)
Population: 8,251,000
Population density: 18 per km2 (as of 2017, world rank: 100)
Capital: Port Moresby
Official languages: English, Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu
Gross domestic product: US $ 21.1 billion; Real growth: 2.2%
Gross national product (GNP, per resident and year): 2410 US$
Currency: 1 Kina (K) = 100 Toea
Embassy
Avenue de Tervuren 430, B-1150 Brussels
T +32 2 7790609,
Fax +32 2 7727088
Government
Head of State: Elizabeth II, Head of Government: Peter O’Neill, Exterior: Rimwahlbink Pato
National Day: 16.9.
Administrative division
20 provinces, 1 autonomous region and capital district
State and form of government
Constitution of 1975
Parliamentary monarchy (in the Commonwealth)
Parliament (National Parliament) with 111 members, election every 5 years,
right to vote from 18 years of age
Population of: Papua New
Guineans, last census 2011: 7,275.324 population
approx. 750 ethnic groups: mainly Papua; Malays, Melanesians, Micronesians; Chinese minority
Cities (with population): Buka as of 2011: 5416 residents.
Religions: 96% Christians; indigenous and syncretistic religions (status: 2006)
Languages: English, Tok Pisin (Pidgin-English), Hiri Motu; approx. 742 Papuan languages
Employed persons by economic sector
no information
Unemployment (in% of the labor force)
no information
Inflation rate (in%): 2017: 5.2%
Foreign trade: Import: 3.0 billion US $ (2017); Export: 10.1 billion US $ (2017)
Papua New Guinea has been an independent state since 1975, the year in which Australian domination over the eastern part of the homonymous island of Papu ended: the western part, annexed by Indonesia in 1969, still constitutes the Indonesian province of West Papua. The country’s main partner is Australia, to which it is linked by a very high commercial exchange and historical heritage. Relations between the two countries have recently improved, especially since Papua New Guinea officially made a commitment to control sea migration to Australia. However, Canberra continues to look at its neighbor with distrust. Papua New Guinea, in fact, is an unstable country, one of the most fragile in the world due to its political, economic and social fragmentation: Australia fears that this could have repercussions on its territory. In the 1990s, the independence pushes of the island of Bougainville led to an open confrontation with the Papuan government forces. The conflict ended only in 1998, with an agreement that guaranteed the island wide autonomy. On the other hand, the country is trying to distance itself from the preponderant Australian political and economic influence and to get closer to China, with which since 1976 it has had a stable diplomatic relationship based on adherence to the ‘One-China Policy’, consisting in not entertaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan. To date, trade with Beijing is still relatively low, but the trend indicates that the share will grow progressively over the next few years. Furthermore, both aid and investments from China are on the rise: in 2004 the China Metallurgical Construction Company started a $ 670 million project to exploit nickel and cobalt reserves: this is the largest investment in the southern region of ‘Pacific Ocean. The need to find new energy resources and raw materials drives Beijing’s foreign policy in direct competition with the similar policy pursued by the US in the Pacific area: Papua New Guinea benefited from an investment of 15 billion dollars by the Exxon Mobil in the liquefied natural gas sector. Although the tensions led to the boycott of some machinery by the dispossessed residents, work began in 2010 and ended in 2014. As well as political, the repercussions of this investment are above all economic, given that the Papuan government will probably derive around 3 billion dollars a year, or a share equal to 37% of the current national GDP. The US company itself has announced the construction of a second plant in the country for the production of liquid natural gas.
Papua New Guinea’s relations with its Malaysian neighbors are also intense. The Papuan government announced in September 2013 an expansion of the country’s aid program, with packages to be awarded to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Tonga. Another country with which Papua has a strong relationship, despite the fact that there is no significant trade, is the United Kingdom. The country is a member of the Commonwealth and has the British monarch as head of state, represented by a governor general with mostly ceremonial functions.
Since 2011, the Papuan political scene has gone through a phase of strong instability caused by the indictment (formalized by the Leadership Tribunal, competent in matters of corruption) of Michael Somare, who has dominated the political life of the country since the conquest of independence holding the position of prime minister for 17 years. Somare was suspended for two weeks on the charges; following an illness he temporarily left the country and his family announced his resignation. However, Somare denied ever introducing them and continued to lead a government parallel to that of Peter O’Neill, meanwhile appointed premier. The parliamentary elections of June-July 2012, however, marked the victory of the National People’s Congress, a party led by O’Neill, whose broad affirmation seems to have legitimized his government and laid the foundations for the conclusion of one of the most delicate institutional crises in the recent history of the country. The prime minister can count on a very large coalition, made up of 95 parliamentarians loyal to him out of 111, and his government is, among other things, favored by the introduction of a new law that prevents recourse to the no-confidence motion for the former. thirty months in office.
The instability that has characterized the Papuan political system derives above all from the personalistic and ethnic roots on which it rests, determined by the peculiar ethnography of Papua. Papuans speak over 800 languages and are fragmented into groups with deeply different cultures and traditions due to the morphology of the territory, mountainous and mostly covered by forests, which throughout history has hindered contacts and still weakens the identity. national. Such isolation entails tensions between the various ethnic groups and, more generally, between the population – who conceive the land as a community good – and the multinationals, attracted by the enormous mineral and energy resources of the subsoil. To address the tensions, the state reintroduced the death penalty in 1991. As of 2015,
The economy is based on the wealth of natural mineral, energy and forest resources: their export constitutes the small portion of the existing formal economy. The country has huge reserves of gold, copper, natural gas and oil, which allow the trade balance to remain constantly positive and make up most of the GDP. Generally, however, the economy travels on informal channels, which employ the majority of the population. Only 2% of the territory is arable and therefore agriculture, while occupying over 70% of the workforce and providing sustenance to 85% of the population, is essentially subsistence. If we add to this the structural lack of infrastructure, the trauma of urbanization of people accustomed to village life and the poor development of human capital.
