Allocate resources, including dedicated staff, to government agencies to update, disseminate, and systematically implement existing victim identification and referral SOPs and widely train stakeholders on their use. * Work with civil society, the private sector, and religious and community leaders to develop public awareness campaigns in local languages and on messaging applications, including to raise awareness of and reduce demand for commercial sex acts and forced labor, especially of children. * Investigate and prosecute trafficking crimes, including those involving victims’ family members and complicit officials who facilitate or directly benefit from trafficking, and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms. * Develop, adopt, and implement an updated anti-trafficking NAP and allocate dedicated funding and resources to its implementation. * Amend the criminal code to criminalize child sex trafficking without elements of force, fraud, or coercion, consistent with international law. * Institutionalize anti-trafficking training for front-line officials on the indicators of trafficking and victim-centered and trauma-informed trafficking investigations, including evidence collection. * Increase interagency collaboration and information sharing among key agencies, including police, customs, and immigration. * Mandate the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, the Forest Authority, and the National Fisheries Authority to investigate and address human trafficking in the logging and fishing sectors. * In collaboration with civil society, proactively identify trafficking victims by screening for trafficking indicators among vulnerable populations, including IDPs, People’s Republic of China (PRC) nationals employed at worksites affiliated with PRC-based companies and with the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative, communities located near commercial forestry operations, children in communities marked by inter-tribal conflict, and individuals – including children – apprehended for illegal fishing, desertion from foreign-registered fishing vessels, illegal logging, illegal gold panning, or immigration crimes, and provide them protection services. * Improve victim identification and increase interagency coordination to ensure victims are not inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked. * Strengthen the National Anti-Human Trafficking Committee (NAHTC) by regularizing its meetings and functions, designating senior officials to represent their agencies, increasing awareness of and participation in the committee by civil society and protection stakeholders, and allocating resources for its activities. * Increase coordination and collaboration between Immigration and Citizenship Authority (ICA) and the Department of Justice and Attorney General to investigate and prosecute trafficking cases. * Educate government stakeholders on the process to designate an individual as a trafficking victim and simplify the process for doing so. * Increase oversight and regulation of the logging and fishing sectors, including by dedicating funding and resources to increasing manpower and surveillance monitoring equipment and penalizing government officials for taking bribes, which hinder anti-trafficking efforts in these sectors. * Take steps to eliminate recruitment or placement fees charged to workers by labor recruiters and ensure any recruitment fees are paid by employers. * Accede to the 2000 UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the 2000 TIP Protocol.

The government did not report any law enforcement efforts. The Criminal Code Amendment of 2013 criminalized most forms of sex trafficking and all forms of labor trafficking and prescribed penalties of up to 20 years’ imprisonment. These penalties were sufficiently stringent and, with respect to sex trafficking, commensurate with penalties prescribed for other grave crimes, such as rape. Inconsistent with international law, the law required a demonstration of force, fraud, or coercion to constitute a child sex trafficking offense and therefore did not criminalize all forms of child sex trafficking.

The government did not report investigating any trafficking crimes, compared with investigating two sex trafficking cases in the previous reporting period. For the second consecutive year, the government did not report any trafficking prosecutions. The government did not report an update on five prosecutions initiated in previous reporting periods. For the third consecutive year, the government did not report any trafficking convictions. The government did not report an update to investigations initiated from a prior reporting period of six suspended ICA officers, including three from the visa and passports division, who allegedly engaged in misconduct regarding visa applications which increased foreign nationals’ vulnerability to trafficking. In January 2023, media reports alleged involvement of several senior police officials in a sex trafficking syndicate; in the previous reporting period, senior government officials confirmed the allegation and reported authorities initiated an investigation. The government did not report an update on this case. The government did not report any new investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking crimes; however, corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained significant concerns, inhibiting law enforcement action. In a prior reporting period, government officials reported law enforcement accepted bribes from incoming vessels in Papua New Guinea waters and logging companies, which greatly hindered anti-trafficking efforts in those industries. Logging companies bribed officials to bypass inspections and not take law enforcement action against employees accused of crimes, such as sexual abuse and exploitation, including potential trafficking crimes. The government did not report cooperating with foreign counterparts on any law enforcement activities.

Observers ascribed poor prosecutorial efforts to limited prosecutorial capacity; widespread observance of customary justice practices; fear of retribution; distrust of law enforcement among victims; and insufficient resources and political will among law enforcement to conduct investigations, particularly in rural areas. Civil society reported the government lacked sufficient financial resources to adequately prepare prosecutors and bring witnesses to national courts hindering prosecutorial efforts across all cases, including trafficking. In a prior reporting period, customs officials reported lack of manpower, monitoring and surveillance equipment, and funding impaired anti-trafficking monitoring efforts for labor or sex trafficking on vessels in Papua New Guinea waters. Civil society reported police services remained dependent on the availability of basic necessities, including fuel. Government officials reported citizens regularly paid for fuel for police vehicles to facilitate responses to incidents. Observers reported an underfunded and undertrained police force exacerbated the country’s pervasive threat of violence and lawlessness. Law enforcement agencies and most government offices remained weak as a result of underfunding, corruption, cronyism, lack of accountability, lack of human resources, and a patronage-based promotion system. Informal justice systems often handled criminal cases due to the formal justice system’s lack of capacity and the remoteness of some communities, which stymied victims’ access to justice.

A senior official reported the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC), Papua New Guinea Customs Service, and ICA shared responsibility to combat human trafficking and acknowledged the RPNGC could increase its efforts to combat trafficking. National and provincial officials’ limited understanding of trafficking – including anti-trafficking laws, trafficking indicators, and investigative techniques – continued to hinder effective law enforcement activity. Senior government officials remained unaware of trafficking, including of their respective agencies’ own anti-trafficking efforts, and regularly conflated migrant smuggling and human trafficking. In addition, government officials and civil society observers reported judicial sector officials lacked awareness of trafficking and needed training. Civil society reported authorities could not recognize domestic trafficking and reported a need for training, particularly on case writing for effective prosecution, evidence collection, and victim-centered approaches to investigating and prosecuting trafficking cases. For the third consecutive year, the government did not report any anti-trafficking training activities for its officials.

The government did not report any efforts to identify or assist victims. For the second consecutive year, the government did not report identifying any trafficking victims. The government had victim identification and referral SOPs but did not report implementing them and continued to lack a written procedural guide for implementation as previously recommended in its expired NAP; general awareness of the SOPs among front-line officers remained limited. In addition, the SOPs did not contain adequate measures to screen for trafficking indicators among LGBTQI+ individuals or adults arrested for commercial sex.

The government did not report assisting any victims or funding victim protection services and relied heavily on civil society to provide services. Civil society organizations, without financial or in-kind support from the government, could provide limited psycho-social services and short-term shelter services to victims. Women and child victims could receive services through NGO-run gender-based violence (GBV) programs, and while male victims could receive ad hoc services through NGOs, there were no government or NGO services specifically tailored to the needs of trafficking victims. Observers reported minimal to no services available for victims of crime, including trafficking victims. Observers reported GBV and child protection cases referred to family and sexual violence units may have involved unidentified trafficking victims due to a lack of resources and awareness of trafficking indicators among police. Civil society reported a widespread reluctance for victims to report exploitation due to a lack of witness protection, including concern safehouses lacked adequate protection following instances in which police shared victims’ addresses publicly.

The government continued to lack a structured plan to identify or refer victims among vulnerable communities or among communities displaced as a result of conflict or natural disasters. Logging and mining sites primarily operated in remote regions with limited or no government oversight. In a prior reporting period, ICA reported allegations of mistreatment and pay discrepancies among workers while conducting immigration enforcement spot checks at logging camps; however, the government did not report acting against illegal logging sites or report any efforts to identify sex or labor trafficking victims at such sites. Civil society reported relevant agencies lacked a mandate to investigate potential trafficking crimes in the logging and fishing sectors. The criminal code identified human trafficking as a crime but did not give the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, the Forest Authority, or the National Fisheries Authority the mandate to address human trafficking in these sectors.

The criminal code provided guidance to protect foreign victims from punishment for immigration offenses committed solely as a direct result of being trafficked; however, authorities likely arrested or deported some unidentified trafficking victims for such crimes due to ineffective victim identification, poor interagency coordination, and the requirement for a court to formally determine an individual as a trafficking victim. Observers reported authorities lacked training and general awareness of human trafficking and the SOPs, and routinely deported potential victims, including individuals in commercial sex, without screening for trafficking indicators. In prior years, observers reported a law allowing officials to apprehend foreign fishermen for desertion in port may have dissuaded some forced labor victims from escaping and reporting their abuses. The law provided legal alternatives to the removal of foreign victims to countries where they may face hardship or retribution, but the government did not report offering this protection to any victims. The law lacked provisions for victims to seek compensation through civil suits.

The government did not report any efforts to prevent trafficking. For the second consecutive year, the NAHTC did not report meeting and continued to lack sufficient resources and commitment from the government. The government did not appoint specific committee members to represent relevant agencies and effectively excluded non-governmental stakeholders. Government officials reported a lack of interagency coordination hindered anti-trafficking efforts. The government did not report allocating dedicated funding or resources to implement or update its expired NAP.

For the third consecutive year, the government did not report conducting any anti-trafficking awareness campaigns. Civil society reported the lack of a local language translation of “human trafficking” as a concept hindered the government’s ability to effectively spread awareness of the crime. The government lacked effective policies to regulate foreign labor recruiters or hold them liable for fraudulent recruitment practices. With no more than two labor inspectors per province, inadequate resources, and endemic corruption, the government did not take adequate steps to prevent forced labor in the logging industry. Authorities reportedly issued forestry permits in violation of pre-existing land ownership rights and, without further oversight, led to the displacement and heightened vulnerability of Indigenous communities and an increased risk of labor trafficking among forestry workers. The government did not report providing anti-trafficking training to its labor inspectors. The government did not allow migrant workers to change employers without a new work permit. The government did not report regulating recruitment fees, which continued to contribute to debt-based coercion among foreign workers. The government did not operate or support an anti-trafficking hotline, and reports of suspected trafficking crimes had to be made either in person at a police station or emailed to the NAHTC and the Department of Justice and Attorney General; therefore, the ability to report trafficking cases for law enforcement action was limited. The government did not report providing anti-trafficking training to its diplomatic personnel. The government did not make efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts. Papua New Guinea was not a party to the 2000 UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime nor the subsequent TIP Protocol.

As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Papua New Guinea, and traffickers exploit victims from Papua New Guinea abroad. According to international NGO research conducted in previous years, approximately 30 percent of Papua New Guinean sex trafficking victims are children, with some as young as 10 years old. A 2023 report documented approximately 15 percent of Papua New Guinean children had their birth officially registered, leaving undocumented children more vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. LGBTQI+ individuals face cultural stigmas and an increased vulnerability to violence and exploitation in larger cities, including trafficking. Traffickers exploit foreign national and local women and children in sex trafficking and in forced labor in domestic service, the tourism sector, manual labor, forced begging, and street vending. Traffickers exploit Papua New Guinean children to forced criminality in illegal gold panning. Boys as young as 12 reportedly experience conditions indicative of forced labor as porters. Traffickers exploit women and girls in sex trafficking by means of making threats via online messaging applications to coerce them into sex trafficking; lodges, motels, and hotels in Port Moresby reportedly knowingly facilitate exploitation. Within the country, traffickers lure women and children with promises of legitimate work or education to travel to different provinces, where they are exploited in sex trafficking or domestic servitude, including in nightclubs. Traffickers provide fraudulent identification documents to victims with older ages listed to evade detection of child sex trafficking during law enforcement actions. Men reportedly exploit girls as young as 15 in sex trafficking exchanging money, gifts, or mobile phone credits for sex acts. Traffickers exploit children in sex trafficking in logging camps. Traffickers exploit children in the production of online child sexual exploitation material. Anecdotal reports show an increase in online child sexual exploitation, some of which may be child sex trafficking, in connection with an increased use of the internet since the pandemic. Anecdotal reports show heightened risks of sexual exploitation in commercial sex – including heightened risks of child sex trafficking – which may be due to ongoing pandemic-related economic impacts.

Traffickers, including immediate family or tribe members, reportedly exploit children in sex trafficking or forced labor. Some city-dwelling families compel relatives to live with them and then exploit the relatives in domestic servitude. Some parents force children to beg or sell goods on the street, and some put their daughters into marriages or child sex trafficking to settle debts, resolve disputes between communities, or support their families. Marriages in Papua New Guinea commonly involve a “bride price” of money or chattel paid to the wife’s family by the husband’s family, who use the bride price as debt to compel the woman to remain in abusive or servile marriages. Some parents reportedly transfer their children – some as young as 12 – to other families via informal paid adoption arrangements that, absent monitoring or registration practices, increase their risk of trafficking; this is particularly prevalent among girls, whom adoptive families often seek out as potential sources of future bride-price income. Young girls sold into polygamous marriages may be forced into domestic service for their husbands’ extended families or exploited in sex trafficking. Children whose homes are located far away from schools, sometimes a four- to five-hour walk, commonly sleep near the school during the week increasing their vulnerability to trafficking. Children whose families are unable to pay for their educational fees to attend school are forced to work to pay off the fee.

Individuals – particularly women and girls – displaced as a result of frequent natural disasters and communal conflict, are at higher risk of trafficking due to poor or nonexistent IDP camp security and loss of livelihoods. Tribal leaders reportedly trade the exploitative labor and service of girls and women for guns, to forge political alliances, and to settle disputes with one another. Adolescent boys are also increasingly involved in inter-tribal and intercommunal armed conflict possibly via forcible recruitment by local leadership. International observers report increasing intercommunal tensions resulting from displacement have led to more Papua New Guinean women and girls facing “sorcery” accusations from men in an attempt to psychologically coerce them into forced labor or sex trafficking. In addition, the cultural tendency in the highlands to attribute untimely deaths to “sorcery”, rather than illness or other natural causes increases Papua New Guineans’ vulnerability – often women and girls, individuals living in poverty, and family members of men who die of HIV/AIDS – as traffickers threaten them with accusations of “sorcery” as a means of extorting them or coercing them into forced labor or sex trafficking.

Traffickers use Papua New Guinea as a transit point to exploit foreign individuals in other countries. In prior years, the closing of traditional travel routes due to pandemic-related border control restrictions and the imposition of new and complex requirements for entry may have increased the vulnerability to trafficking among foreign migrant workers. Asylum-seekers detained in Papua New Guinea for attempting to reach Australia by boat may have increased vulnerability to forced labor or sex trafficking due to displacement, economic instability, and lack of access to basic resources and community support networks. Malaysian and PRC-based logging companies arrange for some foreign women to enter the country voluntarily with fraudulently issued tourist or business visas; this practice may also be present at other foreign-owned logging sites. After their arrival, many of these women – from countries including Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the PRC, and the Philippines – are turned over to traffickers who transport them to logging and mining camps, fisheries, and entertainment sites and exploit them in sex trafficking and domestic servitude. Sex traffickers also reportedly exploit foreign children in Papua New Guinea. Men from the PRC and Malaysia may be forced to work in Papua New Guinea at projects run by Malaysian, Filipino, and PRC-based companies. PRC nationals employed in Papua New Guinea affiliated with the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative are vulnerable to forced labor, particularly in construction and mining. Traffickers force PRC national, Malaysian, Filipino, and local men to work at commercial mines and logging camps. Burmese, Cambodian, PRC national, Malaysian, Vietnamese, and local men and boys seeking work on fishing vessels go into debt to pay recruitment fees, which vessel owners and senior crew manipulate to coerce them to continue working indefinitely through debt bondage in Papua New Guinea’s exclusive economic zone and in other maritime territories, particularly in tuna fishing. These fishermen may face little to no pay, contract switching, wage garnishing or withholding, harsh working and living conditions, restricted communication, and threats of physical violence as coercive tactics to retain their labor. Often with direct government support, companies reportedly compel these workers to carry out illegal logging and fishing activities, making them vulnerable to forced criminality. Police reportedly accepted bribes to allow undocumented migrants to enter the country or ignore trafficking situations. Corruption among forestry officials may abet forced labor among loggers and sex trafficking in communities situated near logging sites; some of these officials reportedly accept bribes to issue logging permits in violation of environmental standards and land ownership rights, leading to displacement and concomitant loss of livelihood that make some communities more vulnerable to exploitation.