Sorcery Accusation–Related Violence in Papua New Guinea Part 2: Key Characteristics of Incidents, Victims and Perpetrators

Abstract

It is extremely difficult to gauge the nature and extent of sorcery accusation–related violence (SARV) at a national level in any country. In part this is due to under-reporting and because official health and justice records do not typically monitor whether incidents are linked to sorcery accusations. Papua New Guinea poses particular challenges because of its language and cultural diversity, and poor reach and reliability of data collection in government services that respond to SARV. The vast majority of literature on SARV in Papua New Guinea is qualitative in nature, and most is localised, with very few quantitative studies. Show more