Papua New Guinea

• Adoption of Papua New Guinea's Universal Periodic Review

  Universal Periodic Review on Human Rights -- Outcome Adoption for Papua New Guinea

  Delivered by Lisa Majumdar

  Thank you, Mr President.

  Transparency International PNG, PIANGO and CIVICUS welcome the government of Papua New Guinea's engagement with the UPR process, although we regret its late response to recommendations.

  Space for civil society remains significantly obstructed in Papua New Guinea. Human rights defenders (HRDs) face legal persecution such as arrest and detention as well as harassment, intimidation, threats and violence, including from companies that they criticise. The risk is greatest for HRDs who challenge vested political, social and economic interests, especially land and environmental HRDs.

  Many journalists have reported intimidation aimed at influencing coverage of government figures and by agents of members of parliament. Just last month, long-standing and experienced news manager Sincha Dimara was suspended by her news outlet, allegedly following a request from the authorities.

  There is no freedom of information legislation in Papua New Guinea and no domestic laws or policies to recognise and protect HRDs, who, along with journalists, continue to face harassment for undertaking their work.

  Defamation laws, such as the Defamation Act 1962 and defamation sections in the Cybercrime Act, have had a chilling effect on freedom of expression and political discourse.

  Our organisations call on the Government of Papua New Guinea to take concrete steps to address these concerns, including by:

  • Reviewing and amending criminal defamation provisions in the Cybercrime Act to ensure that it is in line with ICCPR article 19 and international law and standards;
  • Ensuring that journalists and writers can work freely and without fear of retribution for expressing critical opinions or exposing abuses or corruption by the authorities and companies;
  • Ensuring that HRDs are able to carry out their legitimate activities without fear or undue hindrance;
  • Establishing an independent national human rights institution in accordance with the Paris Principles.

  We thank you.

  ---

   Civic space in Papua New Guinea is rated as obstructed by the CIVICUS Monitor 

• As the climate crisis intensifies, so does the crackdown on environmental activism, finds new report

  New research brief from the CIVICUS Monitor examines the crackdown of environmental activism and profiles important victories civil society has scored in the fight for climate justice.

  • Environmental protests are being criminalised and met with repression on all continents
  • State authorities and private companies are common perpetrators of violations to civic freedoms
  • Despite the risks and restrictions, activist groups continue to score important victories to advance climate justice.

  As world leaders meet in Glasgow for the UN Climate Change Negotiations (COP26), peaceful environmental activists are being threatened, silenced and criminalised around the world. The host of this year's meeting is one of many countries where activists are regularly facing rights violations.

  New research from the CIVICUS Monitor looks at the common tactics and restrictions being used by governments and private companies to suppress environmental movements. The research brief “Defenders of our planet: Resilience in the face of restrictions” focuses on three worrying trends: Bans and restrictions on protests; Judicial harassment and legal persecution; and the use of violence, including targeted killings.

  As the climate crisis intensifies, activists and civil society groups continue to mobilise to hold policymakers and corporate leaders to account. From Brazil to South Africa, activists are putting their lives on the line to protect lands and to halt the activities of high-polluting industries. The most severe rights abuses are often experienced by civil society groups that are standing up to the logging, mining and energy giants who are exploiting natural resources and fueling global warming.

  As people take to the streets, governments have been instituting bans that criminalise environmental protests. Recently governments have used COVID-19 as a pretext to disrupt and break up demonstrations. Data from the CIVICUS Monitor indicates that the detention of protesters and the use of excessive force by authorities are becoming more prevalent.

  In Cambodia in May 2021, three environmental defenders were sentenced to 18 to 20 months in prison for planning a protest  against the filling of a lake in the capital. While in Finland this past June, over 100 activists were arrested for participating in a protest calling for the government to take urgent action on climate change. From authoritarian countries to  mature democracies, the research also profiles those who have been put behind bars for peacefully protesting.

  “Silencing activists and denying them of their fundamental civic rights is another tactic being used by leaders to evade and delay action on climate change” said Marianna Belalba Barreto, Research Lead for the CIVICUS Monitor. “Criminalising nonviolent protests has become a troubling indicator that governments are not committed to saving the planet .”

  The report shows that many of the measures being deployed by governments to restrict rights are not compatible with international law. Examples of courts and legislative bodies reversing attempts to criminalise nonviolent climate protests are few and far between.

  Despite the increased risks and restrictions facing environmental campaigners, the report also shows that a wide range of campaigns have scored important victories, including the closure of mines and numerous hazardous construction projects. Equally significant has been the rise of climate litigation by activist groups. Ironically, as authorities take activists to court for exercising their fundamental right to protest, activist groups have successfully filed lawsuits against governments and companies in over 25 countries for failing to act on climate change.

  ---

  DOWNLOAD REPORT

• CIVICUS' United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Submissions on Civil Society Space

  CIVICUS and its partners have submitted joint and stand-alone UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) submissions on 4 countries in advance of the 39th UPR session in October 2021. The submissions examine the state of civil society in each country, including the promotion and protection of the rights to freedom of association, assembly and expression and the environment for human rights defenders. We further provide an assessment of the States’ domestic implementation of civic space recommendations received during the 2nd UPR cycle over 4 years ago and provide a number of targeted follow-up recommendations.

• PAPUA NEW GUINEA: ‘If we allow seabed mining everyone is at risk’

  Following a year marked by massive mobilisation around the climate emergency, CIVICUS is interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about the main environmental challenges they face and the actions they are taking. CIVICUS speaks withJonathan Mesulam, spokesperson for the Alliance of Solwara Warriors and a campaigner on issues relating to experimental deep-sea mining, climate change and logging in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

  The Alliance of Solwara Warriors is an anti-mining alliance of local communities in areas affected by deep-sea mines in PNG and across the Pacific. It has organised theresistance  against seabed mining since 2009, when the controversial deep-sea mining project Solwara 1 was proposed to mine mineral-rich hydrothermal vents on the floor of the Bismarck Sea. The alliance also launched alegal case against the project in PNG's courts. In November 2019, the company behind Solwara 1, Nautilus, was declared bankrupt and it is uncertain if the project will continue.

  

  Can you tell us about the Alliance of Solwara Warriors and how it was formed? What are its main objectives and why is it opposed to seabed mining?

  The Alliance of Solwara Warriors was formed in 2016 by representatives of communities along the Bismarck Sea who are threatened by seabed mining. The members of the Alliance also include the Papua New Guinea Council of Churches, international and local environmental civil society organisations (CSOs), educated elites, local community-based organisations and a few politicians who support the call to ban deep-sea mining. Our main objective is to ban deep-sea mining in PNG waters and the Pacific and we also call for the cancellation of exploration and mining licences.

  Seabed mining is a new frontier for the mining industry and is very risky as our understanding of the seabed is very limited. The first discovery of deep-sea minerals was in 1979 and we have no idea how the seabed ecosystem operates. If we allow seabed mining, then we may just call for the end of humanity, as the complexity of the food chains on which humans depend will be affected, putting human life at risk. I think we should all stand in solidarity to ban deep-sea mining in our area because the sea has no boundaries and when the marine ecosystem is affected, everyone everywhere is at risk.

  Environmental and legal groups have urged extremecaution around seabed mining, arguing there are potentially massive – and unknown – ramifications for the environment and for nearby communities, and that the global regulatory framework is not yet drafted, and is currently deficient.

  How has the campaign against seabed mining progressed? What have you achieved?

  The campaign against seabed mining has been very challenging and at times we almost lost hope because of the heavy presence of Nautilus, the company behind the Solwara project, at the project site for the last eight years. However, there has been growing opposition from coastal communities, local and international CSOs and churches, especially the Catholic and Lutheran churches. An environmental law firm, the Centre for Environment and Community Rights, filed a legal case and we were able to stop this project from going into full-scale mining operation. Every concerned individual and organisation has played a very important role in their respective areas of work, such as finance, the environment and politics, to stop this project.

  During the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum, held in Tuvalu in August 2019, the Pacific Island leaders also called for a 10-year moratorium on deep-sea mining. But that is not what we wanted. We arecalling for a total ban on deep-sea mining.

  What challenges has the alliance faced in recent years?

  Funding activism is a big challenge. To travel to a community to talk to people you need to pay for a bus. You have to raise funds to enable mobility and communication. The second major challenge is capacity development. As members of an alliance we deal with that by distributing challenges; we then help each other and strategise in our workshops so that we can learn from each other. Networking helps with this a lot, and the support of partners such as Bismark Ramu Group, Caritas PNG and the PNG Council of Churches.

  We have also received a lot of support from CSOs and individuals outside the country. People and organisations including Sir David Attenborough, the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, Mining Watch Canada and Caritas New Zealand, just to name a few, have really supported the campaign in terms of funding, providing information on the campaign and lobbying with banks and financers not to support such a project. As a result, we have seen positive results in our work on the ground.

  Another challenge we face is that some people in the community support deep-sea mining, and this creates division. We have had to work hard at times to really convince people that this project is not good. It's only through persistent, dedicated work and making information available so that people have all the facts, not just the perspective that the company wants people to know, that people will really support you. Once people know the truth, then you get the support.

  What is the state of civic freedoms – the freedom of association peaceful assembly and expression – in Papua New Guinea?

  The media in PNG is controlled by the state and they only publish stories that are good for the government. Sometimes our stories are not covered, and we end up publishing them through social media. The right to the freedom of association in PNG really depends on the kind of issues that are being addressed. On some very sensitive issues, the police will not allow people to organise and take part in protests. Our ability to carry on our work alsodepends on the kind of companies we are dealing with. Some companies have spent millions of Kina – the PNG currency – to stop environmental human rights defenders, and going against them is obviously risky.

  Civic space inPapua New Guinea is rated as ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor

  Get in touch with the Alliance of Solwara Warriors through itsFacebook page.

• PAPUA NEW GUINEA: ‘The mining company must address its human rights and environmental legacy’

  CIVICUS speaks with Keren Adams, Legal Director of the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC), about the victory recently obtained in holding the British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto accountable for the multiple human rights violations caused by its operations in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. Established in 2006, the HRLC is an Australian civil society organisation that uses strategic legal action, policy solutions and advocacy to support people and communities to eliminate inequality and injustice and build a fairer, more compassionate Australia.

  What tactics does the HRLC use to hold corporations accountable? 

  The HRLC uses a mixture of strategic litigation, high-impact media work, campaigning and shareholder engagement to hold corporations accountable for the human rights consequences of their actions. We work in partnership with affected communities and workers to seek justice and remedy for corporate human rights abuses. We also advocate to improve regulation and oversight over the activities of Australian companies to ensure they uphold their obligation to respect human rights, wherever they operate.

  What were the impacts of the Rio Tinto operations on Bougainville Island, and how did the HRLC support the struggle of local communities for justice and accountability?

  Rio Tinto’s former Panguna mine on Bougainville left a massive legacy of environmental and social devastation on the island. Panguna had been one of the world’s largest copper and gold mines. During its operation, between 1972 and 1989, over a billion tonnes of waste from the mine were dumped directly into the Kawerong river downstream. The environmental destruction this caused, and its associated social consequences, led to a local uprising that forcibly closed the mine in 1989 and triggered a 10-year civil war on the island. In 2016, Rio Tinto divested from the mine and walked away without accepting any responsibility for this legacy.

  As a result, communities all along the Jaba-Kawerong river valley continue to live surrounded by vast mounds of tailings – mine waste – left over from the mine’s operation. Their water sources are heavily polluted with copper and with every rainfall, huge volumes of tailings erode into the rivers, flooding farms and forests downstream with polluted mud, displacing villagers and destroying peoples’ livelihoods. Many people in the area live with serious health problems, including skin diseases and gastrointestinal and respiratory infections, which local health workers attribute to their exposure to pollution. An estimated 14,000 people live downstream of the mine.

  In 2020, the HRLC assisted 156 local residents from several villages downstream of the mine to file a human rights complaint against the company with the Australian government, alleging serious breaches of the company’s human rights and environmental obligations. In response to the complaint, Rio Tinto agreed to re-engage with the communities about these issues and in July 2021 committed to funding an independent environmental and human rights impact assessment of the mine to identify impacts and risks posed by the mine and develop recommendations for what needs to be done to address them.

  What do you hope will be the outcome of the process once the impact assessment is complete?

  The communities we are working with called for Rio Tinto to fund the impact assessment as a first critical step towards addressing the massive and ongoing environmental and human rights problems being caused by the mine. But it is only the first step. They hope and expect that once the impact assessment is complete, Rio Tinto will contribute to a substantial, independently managed fund to help address the harms caused by the mine and assist long-term rehabilitation efforts.

  These communities urgently need access to clean water for drinking and bathing. They need solutions to stop the vast mounds of tailings eroding into the rivers and flooding their villages, farms and fishing areas. They need their children to be able to walk to school without having to wade through treacherous areas of quicksand created by the mine waste. These are just some examples of what remediation means in real terms for the people living with these impacts.

  What challenges lay ahead in achieving rightful compensation and long-term rehabilitation?

  The extent of the environmental destruction at Panguna and the myriad health and social problems caused by the mine, left unaddressed for over 30 years, mean that substantial resources and a long-term commitment will be needed to find solutions and undertake proper rehabilitation of the site.

  So far, Rio Tinto has only committed to funding the independent assessment of the mine. While we see this as an important development, it remains to be seen how serious the company is about addressing its legacy on the island and providing remedy in accordance with its human rights and environmental obligations. We will be continuing to work with local communities and other stakeholders like the Autonomous Bougainville Government to ensure that they do so.

  Civic space inPapua New Guineais rated as ‘obstructed’by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with the Human Rights Law Centre through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@rightsagenda on Twitter.