Kwa: Village court officials lack capacity on sorcery cases

VILLAGE court officials lack the capacity to deal with sorcery-accusation related violence affecting the country, according to the Department of Justice and Attorney-General.
Department secretary Dr Eric Kwa said during the signing of an agreement with three partners in Port Moresby on Friday that the country had 18,000 village court officials in 1,680 village court areas. Those officials dealt with disputes.
“Our presence in the community is basically though the village court system,” he said.
“They (village court officials) are not trained to deal with counselling, they are not trained to deal with crisis or to look after victims.
“We don’t have that capacity and so we really value our partners and the work they do.
“Sorcery is a very big issue in the country and it will still be here in the next 10 to 30 years. It’s the impact that we want to deal with.”
The partners were the Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council (CIMC) under its Family and Sexual Violence Action Committee (FSVAC), PNG Tribal Foundation and Wantok Radio Light.
The agreements signed on Friday paved the way for them to carry out the work they do under the national action plan against sorcery accusation related violence (Sarv) through various activities.
Kwa said the department was the lead agency in the fight against Sarv and that the Government had approved K3 million to address issues surrounding it.
“We are not experts in the number of matters that affect the rule of law and so we depend very much on our partners, friends who are out there helping us to do the work that we can but can’t do,” Kwa said.
“And so it’s really important that we acknowledge the work that our friends are doing.”