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II. Background

Papua New Guinea is widely portrayed as one of the moredangerous countries in the world not at war. There is no question that the country, and its police force, face a serious violent crime problem, including gang crime, armed highway robbery, tribal fighting in the Highlands, conflicts related to resource development such as mining, and election-related conflict.5 White collar crime, fraud, and corruption among politicians are also serious problems.6 According to surveys and media reports, an unusually high proportion of people, especially in the capital, Port Moresby, and other urban areas, live in fear of and are victims of crime.7 Crime also exacts an enormous economic cost from the country in resources devoted to addressing it, loss of productive work time, additional health care expenses, foreign investment deterred, and other costs.8

Situated on the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and some 600 other islands north of Australia in the Coral Sea, Papua New Guinea is the largest country in the South Pacific. It is also one of the most diverse in the world, linguistically and geographically, with speakers of more than 800 languages and extremely difficult terrain. The country’s capital, Port Moresby, is not connected by road to any major city or town, and around 85 percent of Papua New Guineans live in rural areas, subsisting on agriculture, forestry, and fishing.

Before colonization in the nineteenth century, the inhabitants of New Guinea and the adjacent islands lived in small, reasonably autonomous societal units, linked by trade, intermarriage, and warfare.9 However, most communities remained insular, numbering in the hundreds or at most thousands, with no overarching regional government or political organization.10 Allegiances and obligations to local, kin-based groups—one’s “wantoks”—continue to be very strong, and reciprocity and retaliation (“payback”) remain important means of social control.

In 1884, Germany formally annexed the northeastern portion of New Guinea, and Britain declared a protectorate over the southeast, following Dutch annexation of the western half of the island (now the province of Papua, also referred to as Irian Jaya, in Indonesia). In 1906, Britain transferred its rights to British New Guinea to newly independent Australia, which changed the name to the Territory of Papua. Australian troops invaded German New Guinea (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland) in World War I and gained control over the territory in a League of Nations mandate. Japan invaded New Guinea and some of the Territory of Papua in 1942. In 1945, the territories were combined into the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Australia granted limited home rule in 1951 and autonomy in home affairs in 1960. Papua New Guinea became independent from Australia on September 16, 1975.11

Papua New Guinea’s population is young and growing rapidly: with around 5.6 million people, the population has almost tripled since independence.12 Nearly half are children.13 The government has struggled to provide basic health and education services, especially in rural areas, and these services have declined in recent years. The country’s infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate are among the highest in the world; life expectancy at birth was fifty-eight in 2003.14 The adult literacy rate was 64 percent in 2003; less than half of all school-age children are enrolled in school.15 Poverty and unemployment increased in the 1990s and 2000s; only 5 percent of those who left school found employment in the formal sector in 2002.16 The country ranks the lowest in the Pacific on UNDP’s Human Development Index and in the lowest third of all nations.17  Rural poverty is particularly acute, spurring migration to urban areas that lack the infrastructure to receive them, fueling tensions in urban settlements.

Children and Crime in Papua New Guinea

The rise in crime since independence in 1975 has been attributed to the following: a lack of legitimate income-generating opportunities and an increasing gap in socio-economic levels; rapid social, economic, and technological change and resulting social stress; the colonial legacy and tribal history; the unlikelihood of being caught or convicted for a crime; and greater access to firearms, in part through the conflict on the island of Bougainville from 1989 to 1998.18 Although adult men are also organizers and beneficiaries of organized crime,19 media reports and public attention have focused on adolescent boys and young men—so-called raskols—as perpetrators. According to UNICEF, “even when accused of only minor offenses, juveniles are often dealt with harshly by the police and courts because of the popular perception that all young people in conflict with the law are ‘raskols’ preying on the community.”20

Juvenile crime in urban areas is said to have emerged during the decade leading up to independence, coinciding with the legalization of alcohol and increased migration to cities, especially by single men and boys.21 According to Professor Sinclair Dinnen, a professor at the Australian National University and close observer of crime and policing in Papua New Guinea, gangs provided these migrants with social and material support, helped transmit masculine values where traditional methods were absent, and were not subject to the social controls imposed on deviant behavior in the village.22 The government of Papua New Guinea has reported that many juvenile offenders have “been forced to drop out of school due to the inability of parents or guardians to pay fees or clothe them adequately.”23 We also heard reports that some girls sell sex in order to pay for school fees and other expenses.24

Basic statistics about children in conflict with the law are not collected, and those that are available are not considered reliable.25 Offenses reported by government officials range from pickpocketing and loitering to bank robbery, rape, and murder.26

Jim Wan, an assistant police commissioner, told us:

People say we have a youth problem, but if you go through the crime desk, youths are not major offenders. It’s the seriousness of crimes that they are involved in, not the numbers of crimes, that brings them to the fore. . . . We’ve had thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds in for murder, rape, bank robbery. Usually they are on drugs. . . . Ages seven to eleven are usually pickpocketing.27          

Human Rights Watch could not obtain any figures on the total number of individuals or the number of children detained at a given time in police lockup.28 As of May 23, 2005, 4,036 people were recorded as imprisoned in the country’s correctional institutions (prisons), of whom eighty were reported to be boys on remand and ninety were boys convicted of crimes.29 However, these figures did not include children detained in police stations, juvenile remand centers, or housed in prisons with adults. As of July 2005, there were nineteen or twenty operational prisons.30 Five of these have juvenile sections, although, as Human Rights Watch observed at Bomana prison, even where a juvenile section exists, full separation between juveniles and adults is not always maintained.31 (The detention of children with adults is discussed in the section on conditions of detention, below.)

Girls

Although it is likely that more boys than girls are beaten and tortured by police, it is also likely that abuse of girls by police is vastly underreported by official statistics of girls and women in conflict with the law. Few girls and women are actually charged with crimes and brought before the courts.32 As of July 24, 2003, only 5.6 percent of convicted adult detainees and 3.9 percent of adult remand detainees were women. According to a senior corrections official, the female detainee population tends to constitute around 2.5 percent of the entire detainee population.33 A member of the Juvenile Justice Working Group told Human Rights Watch, “There is no detention for girls in the country, but this doesn’t mean we don’t have girl juvenile offenders. We don’t have any estimates for girl juvenile detainees.”34

As explained in the section below on rape, the low number of girls and women actually charged with and convicted of crimes obscures the fact that many more women and girls come into contact with police. Victims of police violence, including sexual violence, may never show up in police records and may justifiably fear retaliation from police and stigmatization from their communities if they report the abuse.

Police violence against girls occurs in a context of widespread violence against women and girls.35 (Indeed, both boys and girls in Papua New Guinea face violence from sources other than police.)  Papua New Guinea reported to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2002 that “[g]ender discrimination is universal in Papua New Guinea, and begins at birth. . . . There is a high incidence of reported and unreported rape and pack [gang] rapes in Papua New Guinea and a widely held fear of potential sexual assault on girl children.”36 The low status of girls and women is also reflected in discrimination against them in education, health care, and access to paid employment; heavy unpaid workloads; polygamy; and poor access to justice.37 For example, as explained below,police often refuse to respond to complaints of sexual or domestic violence or sometimes demand sex from victims.38

Police Procedures and Children

Although in practice children accused of crimes are still subjected to many or all of the same procedures as adults, Papua New Guinean law requires police to follow special procedures when dealing with children. New policies for magistrates and police adopted in 2004 promise better implementation of these procedures, but their full effect remained to be seen at the time of writing.

The Juvenile Courts Act, which Parliament passed in 1991 but which did not fully enter into force until 2003 because the government failed to gazette it fully until then, places responsibility for juvenile justice with the Department of Justice and the Attorney General and spells out procedures for children. Parts of the act were just beginning to be implemented when Human Rights Watch visited, due to the efforts of the Juvenile Justice Working Group, an interagency group of government and community representatives that is supported by UNICEF.39 The working group and UNICEF drafted a juvenile courts protocol for magistrates, adopted in 2004; one for police was adopted in 2005; and draft minimum standards for juvenile institutions had been drafted but not adopted as of July 2005.40  These protocols detail and expand procedures for police, police prosecutors, and magistrates when dealing with children, and focus on diverting children from the formal justice system, reducing the detention of children, and separating them from adults when they are detained. The working group also drafted a new Juvenile Justice Act in 2005, which had not yet been presented to Parliament at the time of writing.

The age of criminal responsibility in Papua New Guinea is seven, below what the committee which interprets the Convention on the Rights of the Child considers internationally acceptable.41 However, under the Criminal Code, a child under age fourteen is not considered fully responsible unless he or she “had capacity to know that he ought not to do the act or make the omission.”42

By law, police have the power to arrest without a warrant any person they suspect has committed or is about to commit a crime, but they must immediately take the person to the police station.43 Under the new policies, one station is to be designated to process all children arrested in each of seven regions of the country. These stations are to have a separate section for children and officers trained to work with children. In Port Moresby, the capital, the first processing area opened in Boroko police station on April 26, 2005.44 (It should be noted that for this measure to address police violence against children in custody in Port Moresby, police will necessarily have to address violence and torture of children in Boroko station, as documented in this report.) Where there is no designated processing center, the policy specifies that “every effort will be made to process, hold or detain juveniles in separate rooms from adults and female juveniles kept separate from males.”45

The magistrates and police protocols assign specific responsibilities for ensuring that procedures for children are followed to officers in local police stations; in particular, one officer per shift is nominated as the police juvenile officer and made responsible for supervising all juvenile matters. The new policy also directs the director of prosecution in the national police headquarters to deploy two officers as a dedicated Juvenile Protocol Monitoring Unit. Their duties include monitoring the policy’s implementation, training police on the policy, and collecting data on juvenile cases.46

The Juvenile Courts Act provides for the appointment of juvenile court officers who are to monitor police treatment of children at the station, especially when parents are not available. The act gives these officers the power to enter any place where children are detained, including police lockups, to interview children; be present during interrogation; advise children of their rights; question an arresting officer; attend court; and make submissions regarding a sentence.47 Juvenile court officers are to report “any concerns” to the police station commander.48 Hindering or obstructing a juvenile court officer is a criminal offense.49 Although the act envisions that juvenile court officers would be created as paid positions, no money was made available. In April 2005, fifteen volunteers from local NGOs began working as juvenile court officers.50 Outside the capital, some probation officers were taking on this role, and community-based corrections officers were tasked with training community leaders to act as juvenile court officers.51

When police arrest a child, they are required by law to notify a parent or a juvenile court officer.52 Before formally arresting and charging a child, police must consider the option of diversion.53

The law does not explicitly prohibit police from questioning children without an adult or juvenile court officer present, although juvenile court officers have the power to be present during the interrogation of a child.54 In practice, almost all the children we interviewed said they were questioned with only police present; the head of Wewak’s internal investigation unit told us that neither probation officers nor others are present when police question children in Wewak.55 

Detention of children in police cells is limited by the police and magistrates’ policies to designated juvenile cells and only under exceptional circumstances. These circumstances are defined as:

  • to prevent escape where there is strong evidence that the juvenile may try to escape,
  • to protect them from their own actions or actions of others,
  • to protect others from the actions of juveniles.56

Although it was not clear at this writing how this policy would be interpreted or how effectively it would be implemented, the latter exception as written could be broadly interpreted to apply to a large category of children.  (As explained below, these are the same limitations on the use of force against children.)

According to the Juvenile Courts Act, children ages seven to seventeen who are not charged with homicide, rape, or another offense punishable by death or life imprisonment must be tried in juvenile courts, the first of which began operating in September 2003.57 As of June 2005, seven juvenile courts were operating in some capacity in the country.58 According to a member of the Juvenile Justice Working Group, the committee hopes to have juvenile courts in all nineteen provinces by the end of 2005.59


[5] Data on crime are highly unreliable. What exist indicate that violent crime is high and is proportionately greater than in many of Papua New Guinea’s neighbors. See Sinclair Dinnen, “Building Bridges: Law and Justice Reform in Papua New Guinea,” Discussion Paper, February 2002; Sinclair Dinnen, Law and Order in a Weak State ( Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2001), pp. 4-4, 35, 61-62. See also Law and Justice Sector Working Group, “National Law and Justice Policy and Plan of Action Toward Restorative Justice,” December 1999, pp. 10-12; Wayne Stringer, “Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary: Review of Community Policing Approaches,” 2000, sec. 1. However, a 2004 household survey of crime in Port Moresby found that most residents believed that crime, while high, had stayed the same or decreased in the last year. Justice Advisory Group and National Research Institute, “Community Crime Survey Data: Port Moresby and Bougainville,” 2004.

[6] Ibid.; see Institute of National Affairs, National Integrity Systems TI Country Study Report: Papua New Guinea 2003, March 2003 (regarding corruption in Papua New Guinea).

[7] See, for example, Justice Advisory Group and National Research Institute, “Community Crime Survey Data: Port Moresby and Bougainville”;U. Zveic and A. Alvassi del Frate, Criminal Victimization in the Developing World (New York: U.N. Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, 1995); R. Sikani, “Criminal Threat in Papua New Guinea,” in Australia—Papua New Guinea: Crime and the Bilateral Relationship, B. Bohea, ed. (Port Moresby: National Research Institute, 1999), cited in Dinnen, Building Bridges: Law and Justice Reform in Papua New Guinea, notes 8, 9.

[8] See, for example, Sean Dorney, Papua New Guinea: People, Politics and History Since 1975 (Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation Books, 2000), p. 297.

[9] A Papua New Guinea Political Chronicle 1967-1991, Clive Moore with Mary Kooyman, eds. (Bathhurst, New South Wales: Crawford House Publishing, 1998), p. xvi.

[10] Ibid., Sinclair Dinnen, “In Weakness and Strength—State, Societies and Order in Papua New Guinea,” Weak and Strong States in Asia-Pacific Societies, Peter Dauvergne, ed. (St. Leonards, New South Wales: Allen & Unwin, 1998), pp. 40-41.

[11] For more information, see, for example, A Papua New Guinea Political Chronicle 1967-1991, Moore with Kooyman, eds.

[12] Available population estimates vary somewhat.

[13] UNICEF, “At a glance: Papua New Guinea, Statistics,” http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/papuang_statistics.html (retrieved May 4, 2005) (stating that 2.7 million Papua New Guineans were under age eighteen in 2003).

[14] Ibid.

[15] Gross enrollment rates were 61 percent for elementary school and 18 percent for secondary school. AusAID, “PNG Education Sector Affordability Studies Services Order No. 09187/07, Paper 4, Overview of Financing the Education Sector,”September 2003, pp. 34-35; UNDP, Human Development Report 2004 (New York: UNDP, 2004), p. 141, http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/hdr04_HDI.pdf. It should be noted that there is considerable disparity in numbers given by different sources for these data.

[16] AusAID, “Framework: Australia’s Aid Program to Papua New Guinea,” October 21, 2002, p. 5.

[17] Papua New Guinea ranked 133 out of 177 countries on UNDP’s Human Development Index. UNDP, Human Development Report 2004, p. 141. UNDP’s Human Poverty Index for Papua New Guinea is 37 percent, placing the country sixty-second out of ninety-five developing countries for which the index has been calculated. The Human Poverty Index (HPI) “focuses on the proportion of people below a threshold level in basic dimensions of human development—living a long healthy life, having access to education, and a decent standard of living, much as the poverty headcount measures the proportion of people below a certain income level.” United Nations Development Program, “Country Fact Sheets: Papua New Guinea,” 2004http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_PNG.html (retrieved May 5, 2005). See also International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Development Association, “Interim Strategy Note for Papua New Guinea,” no. 31790-PG, March 18, 2005, paras. 1, 16.

[18] See Dinnen, Law and Order in a Weak State, pp. 36 (citing the 1983 Morgan Report), 42-43, 62 (regarding greater access to firearms); Wayne Stringer, Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary: Review of Community Policing Approaches, 2000, sec. 1. From 1989-1998, Papua New Guinea experienced a conflict on the island of Bougainville related to the control of and the practices of the island’s Australian-owned copper mine. An agreement was reached 1997, a ceasefire went into effect in April 1998, and a peace agreement was signed in August 2001 involving a framework for disarmament and autonomy for Bougainville.

[19] Human Rights Watch interview with Sinclair Dinnen, School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, October 5, 2004.

[20] UNICEF, “PNG Children in Conflict with the Law: An Assessment of the Juvenile Justice System,” September 2001, p. 5.

[21] Dinnen, Law and Order in a Weak State, pp. 56-61.

[22] Ibid., p. 56-59. Traditional means of social control among the Melanesian societies that form Papua New Guinea include payback—or the threat of retaliation—“self-help” justice carried out against the offender or a close relative by the victim or the victim’s kin; ostracism; withholding approval or respect through shaming, gossip, and ridicule; and accusations or threats of sorcery. Ibid., p. 15 (citing work by Michael Taylor).

[23] Papua New Guinea, “Initial Reports of States Parties Due in 2000,”Committee on the Rights of the Child, U.N. Doc. CRC/C/28/Add.20, July 21, 2003, paras. 361-62. The United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency also note the role of schools in preventing juvenile delinquency. United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (The Riyadh Guidelines), G.A. Res. 45/112, annex, 45 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 49A) at 201, U.N. Doc. A/45/49 (1990), sec. B.

[24] Human Rights Watch interview with NGO staff working with women and girls in prostitution, Goroka, September 21, 2004; Human Rights Watch interview with staff member, Institute for Medical Research, Goroka, September 23, 2004. See also Help Resources, UNICEF-PNG, “A Situational Analysis of Child Sexual Abuse & the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Papua New Guinea,” draft dated January 2005, pp. 48, 72; Monitoring and Research Branch, National Department of Health; World Vision; and University of Papua New Guinea, “Qualitative Assessment and Response Report on HIV/AIDS/STI Situation Among Sex Workers and their Clients in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea,” 2004, p. 24; Kerry Arabena, “Report on the Transex Project,”October 2000, Appendix 2, “Transex Project Workshops,” October 1-27, 2000, p. 35 (reporting results of workshop for HIV/AIDS peer educators); and Wilfred Peters, Advisor Peer Education, National AIDS Council Secretariat, “Project Design: Targeting Sex Workers of 29 Sites in NCD,” proposal for funding submitted to AusAID, n.d., sec. “Sex for school fees.”

[25] See Papua New Guinea, “Initial Reports of States Parties Due in 2000,”paras. 68, 361 (stating that basic monitoring and disaggregation of statistics for age, gender, and “urban/rural” is “sorely missing in the fields of juvenile justice”); Sinclair Dinnen, “World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems: Papua New Guinea,” National Research Institute, n.d, http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/wfbcjpng.txt (retrieved May 10, 2005) (regarding reliability of data); Human Rights Watch interview with Dinnen, Australian National University, Canberra, October 5, 2004 (stating that statistics on crime are unreliable because police are concentrated in urban areas; vast numbers of crimes are never reported to the police, even in areas where police are present; and where crime is reported, police may not record it); Human Rights Watch interview with Jim Wan, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Port Moresby, September 30, 2004.

When Human Rights Watch inspected the log books in Wewak police station, detainees’ ages were not recorded. In Kokopo police station, East New Britain, a white board posted in the station said there were “nil” juveniles in custody; however, three boys in cells with adults told us they were under eighteen and had been there for two and three months.

[26] The government reported to the Committee on the Rights of the Child that the “most common offenses” children commit are “stealing, breaking and entering, unlawful loitering, unlawful damage to property and possession of drugs,” but “[t]he nature of juvenile offense has changed over the past 10 years from mainly petty theft and other economic crimes to include armed robbery, bank robberies and rape.” Papua New Guinea, “Initial Reports of States Parties Due in 2000,” para. 36. The police station commander in Wewak told Human Rights Watch that police there arrest youths for “breaking and stealing, pick-pocketing, robbery, and rape,” homebrew (alcohol), and drugs. Human Rights Watch interview with Daniel Kayver, Police Station Commander, Wewak Police Station, East Sepik Province, September 20, 2004.

[27] Human Rights Watch interview with Wan, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Port Moresby, September 30, 2004.

[28] There are reportedly sixteen operational rural lock-ups across the country and roughly ninety-three police stations. E-mail from Vijaya Raman, UNICEF-PNG, to Human Rights Watch, July 13, 2005 (citing information from Correctional Services and the National Economic and Fiscal Commission).

[29] National Economic and Fiscal Commission (NEFC), Papua New Guinea Correctional Service, “Papua New Guinea Correctional Service: Detainees Statistic,” May 23, 2005 (chart provided to Human Rights Watch by e-mail, July 13, 2005).

[30] Ibid., (listing twenty prisons); e-mail to Human Rights Watch from Raman, UNICEF-PNG, July 13, 2005 (“Correctional Services states there are 19 prisons across the country,” excluding the non-operational prison in Bougainville and the prison in Tari, which was “closed down due to land disputes and tribal conflicts”).

[31] E-mail from Raman, UNICEF-PNG, to Human Rights Watch, July 13, 2005 (“Correctional Services states that there are 5 juvenile centres across the country. These are: Bomana, Baisu, Boimo, Kerwat, Beon”).

[32] Martha Macintyre, “Major Law and Order Issues Affecting Women and Children, Issues in Policing and Judicial Processes,” Papua New Guinea Law and Justice Sector Program: Gender Analysis, Poverty Reduction Analysis, Poverty and Gender Commission, Regional Partnerships, Public Sector Expenditure Situational Analysis (Final) (hereafter Gender Analysis . . .), ACIL, December 15, 2003, p. 63; Human Rights Watch interview with Wan, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Port Moresby, September 30, 2004 (stating that “Girls are not a problem”).

[33] Abby McLeod, “Gender Analysis of Law and Justice Sector Agencies,” Gender Analysis . . . , p. 46.

[34] Human Rights Watch group interview with several members of the Juvenile Justice Working Group, Port Moresby, October 1, 2004.

[35] For various analyses of violence against women and girls in Papua New Guinea, see Papua New Guinea Law Reform Commission, Final Report on Domestic Violence (1992); Cyndi Banks, “Contextualizing Sexual Violence: Rape and Carnal Knowledge in Papua New Guinea”; Anou Borrey, “Sexual Violence in Perspective: The Case of Papua New Guinea”; Sarah Garap, “Struggles of Women and Girls—Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea”; and Maxine Anjiga Makail, “Domestic Violence in Port Moresby,” Reflections on Violence in Melanesia, Sinclair Dinnen, and Allison Ley, eds. (Leichhardt/Canberra: Hawkins Press/Asia Pacific Press, 2000); Sarah Garap, “Gender in PNG: Program Context and Points of Entry,” Gender Analysis . . . ; Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi, “‘Wild Pigs and Dog Men’: Rape and Domestic Violence as ‘Women’s Issues’ in Papua New Guinea,” Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Caroline B. Brettell and Carolyn F. Sargent, eds., 2d ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997).

[36] Papua New Guinea, “Initial Reports of States Parties Due in 2000,”paras. 108-110.

[37] Garap, “Gender in PNG: Program Context and Points of Entry,” and Robyn Slarke, “Women and Village Courts,” Gender Analysis . . . , pp. 16, 20, 52-66; International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Development Association, “Interim Strategy Note for Papua New Guinea,”para. 16 (“women . . . account for only 20 percent of the formal sector workplace”).

[38] Human Rights Watch interview with sergeant, Goroka police station, Goroka, September 23, 2004 (male police officers do not take seriously complaints of domestic violence). See also Macintyre, “Major Law and Order Issues Affecting Women and Children, Issues in Policing and Judicial Processes,” Gender Analysis . . . , pp. 56, 65-66 (“crimes of violence against women are very common, they are under-reported and . . . the justice system does not deal with offenders and victims in ways that protect women’s rights as citizens”).

[39] Human Rights Watch group interview with several members of the Juvenile Justice Working Group, Port Moresby, October 1, 2004. As of May 2005, the working group had decided to draft a new juvenile justice act, rather than revising the old one. E-mail from Vijaya Raman, UNICEF-PNG, to Human Rights Watch, May 15, 2005.

[40] Magisterial Service of Papua New Guinea, “Juvenile Court Protocols for Magistrates,” 2004; Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, “Subject: Police Juvenile Justice Policy and Protocols,” circular no. 04/2004, file no. 1-7-103, dated December 30, 2004, and signed by the police commissioner February 28, 2005.  The policy was in the process of being published as a handbook for police in July 2005.

[41] Juvenile Courts Act (1991), § 2; Committee on the Rights of the Child, “Concluding Observations: Papua New Guinea,”U.N. Doc. CRC/C/Add.229, January 30, 2004, para. 526. The Committee has not said what the minimum age of criminal responsibility should be.

[42] Criminal Code (1974), consolidated to No. 12 of 1993, § 30. Because most children’s births are not registered, establishing a child’s exact age is often not possible and must ultimately be decided by the court.  Papua New Guinea, “Initial Reports of States Parties Due in 2000,”paras. 74-76; Juvenile Courts Act, § 3 (considerations for determining age). A volunteer juvenile court officer explained: “Most kids don’t know their age. The children’s court sends them to a dentist to determine age.” Human Rights Watch interview with volunteer juvenile court officer, Port Moresby, September 14, 2004. Other ways to establish a child’s age include baptism records and the Department of Health’s Baby Health Record Card. Papua New Guinea, “Initial Reports of States Parties Due in 2000,” paras. 74-76. Where age is unclear, the magistrates protocol requires police officers to defer to a juvenile court officer’s determination or, where no juvenile court officer is available, “determine that the young person is a juvenile.” Magisterial Service of Papua New Guinea, “Juvenile Court Protocols for Magistrates,” p. 6.

[43] Arrest Act (1977), §§ 3, 7.  The Juvenile Courts Act provides no guidance on the arrest of children. 

[44] Ibid., sec. 5.6; e-mail from Raman, UNICEF-PNG, to Human Rights Watch, May 16, 2005; Human Rights Watch interview with Wan, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Port Moresby, September 30, 2004. According to UNICEF, AusAID funded the centers in Port Moresby and Lae and has agreed to construct facilities in five other areas as well. Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Grant and Raman, UNICEF-PNG, July 12, 2005.

[45] Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, “Subject: Police Juvenile Justice Policy and Protocols,” sec. 5.6.

[46] Ibid., sec. 10.

[47] Juvenile Courts Act, § 13.

[48] Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, “Subject: Police Juvenile Justice Policy and Protocols,” sec. 6.

[49] Ibid., sec. 7.3.

[50] E-mail from Raman, UNICEF-PNG, to Human Rights Watch, May 16, 2005.

[51] In Kokopo, for example, a probation officer told us that she was working as a juvenile court officer, although, she said, the station could not always contact her on the weekends. Human Rights Watch interview with juvenile court officer, Kokopo police station, East New Britain, September 27, 2004. See Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, “Subject: Police Juvenile Justice Policy and Protocols,” sec. 6.

[52] Ibid., sec. 6; Juvenile Courts Act, §§ 19-21.

[53] Magisterial Service of Papua New Guinea, “Juvenile Court Protocols for Magistrates,” p. 23.

[54] Juvenile Courts Act, § 13; Magisterial Service of Papua New Guinea, “Juvenile Court Protocols for Magistrates,” pp. 15-16.

[55] Human Rights Watch interview with Nelson Edes, head of criminal investigation division, Wewak police station, September 20, 2004.

[56] Magisterial Service of Papua New Guinea, “Juvenile Court Protocols for Magistrates,” pp. 12, 24; Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, “Subject: Police Juvenile Justice Policy and Protocols,” secs. 2.1, 4.3.

[57] Juvenile Courts Act, part IV.

[58] The Juvenile Courts Act outlines the functions of the juvenile courts. Human Rights Watch has not observed or collected evidence about the proceedings of these courts.

[59] Human Rights Watch group interview with several members of the Juvenile Justice Working Group, Port Moresby, October 1, 2004. All of the magistrates in the province have been trained to sit as juvenile court magistrates members of the group told us. Ibid.


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