- A former AFP officer posted in PNG has made a number of allegations about the conduct of local police and the AFP presence in PNG, claiming the AFP's actions are constrained by the imperative to maintain the Manus Island Refugee Processing Centre. The AFP has responded to this report here.
- Last week I linked to a story criticising an Australian-funded aid project in Vanuatu that has attracted a lot of attention on social media. Two senior ni-Vanuatu public servants, Mike Waiwai and Jeff Malmangrou, published a rebuttal of the arguments in that article in the Vanuatu Daily Post and expressed their support for the aid project in question.
- Vanuatu's President Baldwin Lonsdale has dissolved Parliament and called a snap election following the incarceration of 14 MPs on bribery charges.
- The Pacific Regional Conference on Strengthening Women's Participation in Parliaments is wrapping up today in Port Moresby. The Pacific has the lowest rates of women's representation in parliament in the world.
- In this interview with Radio Australia's Pacific Beat, UNDP team leader and former Labour MP in New Zealand, Charles Chauvel, explains some of the new initiatives being explored to help increase women's political participation in the Pacific.
- This new research from International IDEA looks at political instability in the Pacific and analyses attempts to address the issue through constitutional reform.
- Devpolicy's Stephen Howes and Ashlee Betteridge show the persistently high cost of remittances in the Pacific, with the Australia-PNG corridor proving to be one of the most expensive in the world.
- Today is White Ribbon Day and violence against women is a major problem in Australia and throughout the Pacific. This Human Rights Watch report delves into the issue of family violence in Papua New Guinea.
- Papua New Guinean songwriter Oala Moi on the fight for copyright in his country. It has been over 12 years since PNG introduced a copyright law, but there is still no collective management system that would allow musicians to exercise those rights and receive proper payment when their work is used.
- The Lowy Institute's 2015 GE Australia-Papua New Guinea Emerging Leaders Dialogue will be taking place in Sydney next week. Check out some of the other great work GE is doing in PNG with its portable ultrasound project:
Pacific Island links: AFP in PNG, female MPs, Vanuatu election, remittances and more
Published 25 Nov 2015
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