DPA Discussion Papers
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Browsing DPA Discussion Papers by Subject "Bougainville"
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Item Open Access The Bougainville conflict: perspectives from Nasioi(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 1999) Ogan, EugeneIn reading journalistic and some academic accounts of the Bougainville conflict, I have been struck by two weaknesses. First is a tendency to emphasise only those events immediately leading up to the outbreak of violence in 1988, to the neglect of significant issues originating decades earlier. Second is a picture of a monolithic, homogenous ‘Bougainville’, ignoring both past and present divisions among the population. Both weaknesses can be addressed by focusing on speakers of a language labelled Nasioi, who claim the land on which the Bougainville copper mine was developed; who have consistently provided a strong voice for secession from what is now the nation-state of Papua New Guinea; and who furnished the core personnel and most prominent leadership of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. Their history in the twentieth century has been distinctive, and is worth comparing and contrasting with those of the other language groups on Bougainville and Buka islands. My comments are based primarily on my experiences living intermittently with Nasioi speakers from 1962 to 1978, with the opportunity to see at close range the lives they led before and after the development of the giant copper mine.Item Open Access Bougainville reconstruction aid: what are the issues?(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 1997) Apthorpe, Raymond‘Today, mipela finisim war bilong Bougainville’, (‘Today, the war in Bougainville has ended’) said Sam Kauona, the Commander of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, at the ceasefire signed 30 April 1998. This followed the previous November’s truce. It had become clear by 1997 that a military solution was not possible, that the conflict ‘had many basic sources’, and that a desire for peace was widespread and growing especially in the areas most affected by the conflict (Interdepartmental Committee 1997). It was recognised also that the conflict began because of problems peculiar to Bougainville, and has extended and deepened to a large degree because of tensions within Bougainville. Any lasting solutions…must as much as possible come from Bougainvilleans. By a non-Bougainvillean, but also someone who has never even visited that Province or worked anywhere in Papua New Guinea for decades (and then only for a few months in Port Moresby at the Central Planning Office), this essay on aid issues is therefore highly speculative. It proceeds only by generalization and deduction from what appear to be comparable situations in other parts of the world. No two wars are the same. Obviously Biafra decades ago, then Mozambique, Somalia, Liberia and Rwanda more recently, Bosnia and Afghanistan still, Cambodia, and Rwanda again, are not Papua New Guinea ten or five years ago or now. But some commonalities can perhaps be found. At the time of writing (May 1998), the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea is assuring Bougainvilleans that they have his support for the task of peace and re-building in a spirit of self-reliance and autonomy. It appears that all Bougainville parties now wish for some types of aid, using mainly Bougainvillean inputs, to rehabilitate basic services so as to meet immediate health, education and local roads needs. To judge from reports of demands for more of the types of basic livelihood packs AusAID has provided thus far, this aid response seems to have been appropriate. What is not requested (nor, thus far, supplied) is aid for projects such as airport and seaport rebuilding. This is ruled out because of the strategic implications of such projects for what is feared might become a return to the ‘development’ of old in the province, before the crisis, now in its tenth year. And this, overall, is the position taken here. Contrary to the development-led approach to reconstruction proposed in an inter-agency UNDP document (Rogge 1995), this paper takes the position that ‘development’ ought not to be the watchword. Rather, as post-war aid needs for reconstruction are ascertained, it is a word in reconstruction aid discourse to watch. Humanitarian concerns, rules and conditionalities should be uppermost. Confronted with such situations, perhaps there are new challenges for ways of thinking about aid responses. This paper attempts to identify some.Item Open Access Building peace in Bougainville: measuring recovery post conflict(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM), Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 2013) Chand, SatishThis paper documents the socio-economic status of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville and the extent of rebound in investment and access to services since the cessation of conflict there in 1997. Data on the level of income, the age profile of the population, the level of access to basic services, and levels of investment in residential housing were collected via a household-level survey that was administered in the four major urban centres. The analysis of these data shows that per capita income has rebounded to 40 per cent of the pre-conflict level; approximately half of the total population is aged less than 20 years; and one-third of school age children are not attending school. These observations have value in assessing the extent of economic recovery following the installation of peace and the levels of public investment required for improving access to basic services.Item Open Access Disorderly democracy: political turbulence and institutional reform in Papua New Guinea(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2003) May, RonaldPapua New Guinea is one of the few post-colonial states that has managed to maintain an unbroken record of democratic government. Parliamentary elections have been held regularly on schedule (the latest in June 2002), and although no government has lasted a full parliamentary term, every change of government has followed constitutional procedures. All changes of government (most of them by parliamentary votes of no confidence against the prime minister) have been accepted by both defeated members of parliament (MPs) and the general public. The judiciary has maintained its independence. Notwithstanding occasional tensions in relations between successive governments and elements within the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF), Papua New Guinea has not experienced a military coup. The Freedom House index ranks Papua New Guinea as ‘free’. Yet despite this, both within Papua New Guinea and outside, commentators tend to portray Papua New Guinea as a country marked by political instability, if not chaos, with a state on the verge of collapse. In 1999, for example, Papua New Guinea’s first prime minister, in the context of debate about electoral reform, referred to the country’s National Parliament (of which he is still a member – and in 2002 again prime minister) as a house full of ‘rejects’, lacking a mandate to govern, and on the eve of the 2002 national elections, the then prime minister, Sir Mekere Morauta, suggested that Papua New Guinea was ‘on the verge of collapse’. Not only does Papua New Guinea exhibit many of the signs of a weak state - notably limited capacity to deliver services and a poorly developed sense of national identity – its political institutions seem to be becoming increasingly vulnerable to non-democratic pressures, from long adjournments of parliament and increasingly disorderly national elections to persistent unrest within the defence force. In a region which has given rise to such terms as ‘guided democracy’ (Sukarno’s Indonesia), ‘elite democracy’ (Post-Marcos Philippines), and ‘disciplined democracy’ (Burma after Ne Win), Papua New Guinea might perhaps be described as a ‘disorderly democracy’. The question posed by recent trends is whether the disorderly nature of Papua New Guinea’s politics is simply a reflection of the ‘Melanesian Way’ of doing things, and consistent with the maintenance of a democratic political system, or whether there is a growing disorder which threatens the continued viability of the country’s democratic system. This paper examines the apparent disparity between the broad indications of successful democratic government and the widespread perceptions of governmental failure; reviews ongoing attempts to consolidate Papua New Guinea’s democratic institutions; and, in the light of the recently conducted national election, speculates on the prospects for democracy in the country which is commonly referred to by its own citizens as the ‘Land of the Unexpected’.Item Open Access Post-referendum Decision-making on Bougainville’s Future Political Status: Two Policy Statements(Canberra, ACT: Dept. of Pacific Affairs, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University, 2023-11-13) Himata, Shadrach; Pomaleu, Ivan; Regan, AnthonyThe two speeches that make up most of this publication were presented as keynote statements in the opening session of the State of the Pacific Conference, conducted in Canberra, Australia, on 29 September 2022, by The Australian National University’s Department of Pacific Affairs (DPA). They present the respective positions, late in 2022, of the Papua New Guinea government (Go-PNG) and the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) on key issues arising in the post-referendum decision-making process mandated by the August 2001 Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA) and Part XIV of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) constitution which gave effect to the BPA.