PNG Women's Rights Conference
17-19 September 2003
Connect UK is organising a major Women's Rights Conference that will be held in September. Leading International and local speakers, selected for their expertise on key women's rights issues, will be attending the conference to provide a forum for discussion and workshop to explore the options of what should be done to improve the promotion of Womens Rights in Papua New Guinea.
Dr Purna Sen is a full time lecturer at the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics (as well as being a Visiting Research Fellow at the centre for the Study of Global Governance), where she teaches gender and development, social policy and gender studies. Her research and activism interests have been on violence against women (in the UK, India
and elsewhere including the Middle East) and on advocacy in international systems, such as the UN human rights mechanisms.
She has written on these subjects also. She has worked with several NGOs focusing on human rights, violence against women and work with refuge and other minority groups. She has worked on Violence Against Women for over ten years and before that she worked especially on issues of race equality in the UK. She is connected to an NGO - Southall Black Sisters a resource centre and black women's group involved in struggles over racism, domestic violence, forced marriages and prisoners.
She will be attending and taking part in the PNG Womens Rights Conference in September 2003.
Last year (2002), the following events were organised:
11th March 2002
AIDS Awareness Forum
Opened by Lady Roslyn Morauta, wife of the Prime Minister
Sponsored by the British High Commission. Organised by the Connect UK office.
Venue: The Holiday Inn
Time: 2:30 to 4:30 pm
Proudly supported by Post Courier and PNG FM
11th March 2002
Family Violence - This must be stopped!
Connect UK and the British High Commission organised a special event at the University of Papua New Guinea. We invited special guests to talk about Family Violence in PNG (also Violence against Women)and what is being done to tackle the problems.
Publications on 'Human Rights-Family Violence from the UK Perspective' were available at the event.
The British High Commission funded a senior Indian lawyer's visit PNG to take part in the event as the guest of honour and talk about the 'family violence/violence against women' situation in India.
2003
The Connect UK 'Youth Forum' took place at the Main Lecture Theatre of UPNG
on 26 March at 6:00pm.
The aim of this forum was to let the voice of young people of PNG be heard.
The topics discussed at the Youth Forum are as follows:
1. Health
2. Education
3. Employment Opportunities
4. Crime, Violence, Law and Order
5. Sports
6. Environment
The format involved a panel of guest speakers and advisors who
briefly addressed the issues involving youth in their areas of expertise and
who were available for questions during the question and answer period.
The 'youth forum panel' consisted of young people and leaders from
various sectors inlcuding the media in Port Moresby who discussed issues
of concern to young people. Following the panel discussion, questions from
the floor were encouraged. The forum was filmed by EMTV for use in
their programming.
