Preventing and addressing violence is one of the most urgent challenges of our time. This interdisciplinary research project seeks to develop new ways of understanding how violence and peace emerge, circulate and interact, moving beyond narrow and siloed approaches to explore how different forms of harm and peacemaking shape one another.

The project focuses on three distinct but deeply interconnected forms of violence in Papua New Guinea (PNG): tribal fighting, sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV) and family and sexual violence (FSV). Each has been created or intensified through the legacies of colonialism and the pressures of globalisation. Together, they have profound and enduring consequences for women, men, elders, youth and children, cutting across social, economic and psychological dimensions of life.

The impacts are generational and far-reaching. Communities experience deep psychological trauma alongside disrupted education, housing insecurity, loss of livelihoods, food insecurity and unsafe living conditions. These harms also place immense strain on already weakened health, welfare and security systems, compounding cycles of vulnerability and exclusion.

Despite sustained efforts, many formal, state-based initiatives have struggled to gain trust or achieve lasting change. As noted in the Human Rights Council’s 2021 Report on PNG, law enforcement institutions often lack both capacity and community confidence.

This project starts from a critical but hopeful premise: while PNG is often described through narratives of conflict, it is also rich in practices of peace. Across the country, communities demonstrate remarkable innovation, adaptability and collective engagement in preventing and responding to violence – often outside standard criminal justice frameworks.

By documenting and analysing these practices, the project asks both how violence can be reduced in PNG and what PNG can teach other societies, including those in the Global North, about creativity, responsiveness and coexistence in the pursuit of peace.

Image credit: Photo by Jelilah Kum on Unsplash