Violence Against Women in Papua New Guinea
<i>Every day most of the crimes committed are against women from the Port Moresby slum areas.</i><p>Ah, systemic poverty rears its ugly head again. This is, no doubt, related in part to the fact that 97% of the land is owned as tribal land, which seriously hampers modern economic development:<p><i>The PNG legislature has enacted laws in which a type of tenure called &quot;customary land title&quot; is recognised, meaning that the traditional lands of the indigenous peoples have some legal basis to inalienable tenure. This customary land notionally covers most of the usable land in the country (some 97% of total land area);[56] alienated land is either held privately under state lease or is government land. Freehold title (also known as fee simple) can only be held by Papua New Guinean citizens.[57]<p>Only some 3% of the land of Papua New Guinea is in private hands</i><p>American indigenous peoples also face this problem: You cannot get a mortgage to build a house if the land it sits on cannot be taken by the bank if you default on your payments. This is part of why indigenous peoples are so very poor.<p>I don&#x27;t know what the answer is. Perhaps there is some answer that preserves the tribal lands system and also alleviates the stranglehold that has on development. But I have pondered this on and off over the years and come up with no ideas on how to fix it and have not yet seen anything written up that sounds plausible.<p>In the US, tribes that have improved their economic status seem to mostly do so by taking advantage of the legal loophole that they are sovereign states, not subjected to state laws, and they create casinos on their lands. This provides employment as well as becomes a cash cow for paying for schools and the like.<p>Most people do not think casinos represent serious economic development per se. It is a way to filch some wealth from the pockets of the white men that stole their lands, but real wealth is generally rooted in industry and commerce. Casinos are largely a means to redistribute money, not create new value. Merely redistributing money is very much decried as a bad thing when we do it in the form of welfare.