Safety of women, girls crucial

By TRACEY PARR
THE Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) met on Thursday in Port Moresby to discuss a range of issues affecting women and girls in Papua New Guinea.
Committee chairman and National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop said the committee was mandated to review laws, policies, programmes and other issues that were impacting women and girls in the country.
Parkop said there were many issues affecting women and girls and the committee had the mandate to use oversight powers to change existing laws and hold people accountable.
“I want us to use our power proactively to focus on the issue that is important to ensure safety is paramount for our women and girls,” he said.
“We need to stop talking about what needs to be done and use government resources to bring improvement to our people.”
Deputy chair and East Sepik Governor Allan Bird said the committee needed to put more focus on the importance of strengthening the justice system to ensure there is justice for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) and sorcery accusation related violence (Sarv).
Wau-Waria MP Marsh Narewec confirmed that the plight of women and girls facing GBV and Sarv was a key priority to focus on. “I want the committee to drill down into these issues and provide investigation and criminalisation of violence affecting women and girls in our country,” he said.
The only women on the committee, Central Governor Rufina Peter also acknowledged that GBV and Sarv was a systemic problem across the country that needed to be better tackled by agencies at all levels.
“I believe that if we want to tackle these problems in a sustainable way we also need to address women’s political participation and leadership,” she said.
“Having more women leaders in decision-making positions could curb some of these issues, by bringing different perspectives and approaches to combat these problems.”
Six of seven committee members came together at Parliament House last week for a briefing provided by the United Nations Development Programme.