ACT NOW! has released a new video warning of the dangerous intent behind the government's National Land Summit and their agenda to allow a new land grab led by commercial banks and foreign corporations.
A development researcher has found that land mobilisation and Public-Private Partnership policies renders legitimate traditional land and resource owners mere spectators.
We, Madang Maror and Alliance of Solwara Warriors with support from the Sepik Communities hereby announce that the National Land Summit is a scam.
In Papua New Guinea traditional land does not belong to individuals, it is a communal stewardship. Therefore, the Lands Department and organizers of the summit have NO MANDATE to talk about our traditional land.
The government of plotting to grab more customary land and hand it to multi-national companies and the commercial banks.
While it has been forced to stop issuing illegal SABL leases, the government now intends to use the National Land Summit as a cover to find new ways to ‘facilitate access to customary land’.
In advance of the release of the World Bank’s 2019 Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) report, the Oakland Institute exposes the Bank’s new scheme to privatize land in the developing world.
It is one of the world’s biggest illegal land grabs, yet more than 5-years after the government promised to cancel the SABL leases and return the land to its customary owners, the people of Papua New Guinea are still waiting to hear which, if any, leases have been cancelled.
Image: Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato, Prime Minister Peter O'Neill and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC leaders summit in Port Moresby last year. PNG's PM has faced criticism for spending on the meeting. Photo: APEC Papua New Guinea Media team
Issues of corruption and land grabbing figure high in Human Rights Watch assessemnt of PNG
The United Nations has accused the Papua New Guinea government of racial discrimination against its own people over its failure to stop foreign companies using SABL leases to illegally occupy customary land.
More than 50,000 square kilometres of indigenous land has been seized using the illegal agriculture leases, as exposed in a 2015 Commission of Inquiry.
As Papua New Guinea prepares to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping, civil society, landowners and academics have written to the Chinese leader urging his help to reduce illegal logging in PNG.
China is the major importer of tropical logs from PNG most of which are sourced from illegal sources including from SABL lease areas.
