Urban Poverty, Crime and Ethnic Violence in Papua New Guinea

In Port Moresby, lack of income, unemployment and housing shortage indicate an increase in vulnerable livelihoods, which leads to urban poverty. People living in the poor communities tend to be disadvantageous because they face inappropriate city services such as water, energy, sewer network, public health, waste collection, etc. This situation is exacerbated by health care and lack of educational structures and services (Storey 2010, pp. 8-10). These urban poverty problems and the deterioration of the living environment adversely affect the development plan of Port Moresby and threaten the progress towards achieving several national development goals.

Papua New Guinea is a rare investment destination. The northern Australia is one of Asia's poorest and furthest countries, suffering from corruption and sporadic violence. "The crime rate of Papua New Guinea is the highest in the world," the US State Department warned in 2017 criminal security report that "violent crime such as gang rape, car jack, home invasion, kidnapping, armed robbery". In addition, most of the country is covered with jungle-covered mountains where access is difficult. However, none of them scared the investment in natural gas resources. Exxon Mobil was the first company to enter the company and in 2009 promised to develop $ 19 billion of LNG export facilities. Due to the remote nature of the project, Exxon hired a Russian giant transport aircraft to make it flight to gas turbine and other equipment, and made the runway a jungle.

Papua New Guinea is one of the most diverse countries in the world. There are hundreds of indigenous peoples in Papua New Guinea. Most of them come from a group called Papuans, whose ancestors arrived in New Guinea tens of thousands of years ago. The other indigenous people are south islanders whose ancestors arrived in this area 4000 years ago. There are many people in other parts of the world, such as China, Europeans, Australians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Polynesians, Micronesians (the latter belong to the family of the south island). In 1975, about 40,000 foreigners (mainly from Australia and China) lived in Papua New Guinea.