Human Trafficking in Papua New Guinea: Laws, Prosecution, and Victim Protection

Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea is a large, poorly addressed problem: the country functions as a source, transit, and destination for victims exploited in logging camps, fishing fleets, mining sites, and urban centers, and although the Criminal Code Amendment of 2013 carries penalties up to life imprisonment, the government has not secured a single trafficking conviction in at least four consecutive years.¹ Weak enforcement, entrenched corruption, and near-total reliance on civil society for victim services define the national response.

Where Trafficking Happens and Who It Targets

Papua New Guinea’s geography shapes the problem. Porous borders, vast ungoverned terrain, and hundreds of remote resource extraction sites give traffickers room to operate with little oversight. Logging and mining camps sit far from any government presence, which gives the companies and criminal networks running them cover to exploit workers and move victims through the country undetected.¹

Internal migration deepens the risk. People leaving rural areas for cities or resource sites in search of work often end up isolated, indebted, and without recourse. Poverty, scarce economic opportunity, and weak provincial governance keep feeding vulnerable people into trafficking pipelines.

Forced Labor in Logging, Fishing, and Mining

Forced labor is most prevalent in PNG’s extraction industries. Malaysian and China-based logging companies have arranged for foreign workers to enter the country on fraudulently issued tourist or business visas, and some of those workers are then compelled to carry out illegal logging under forced-labor conditions.¹ Men from China, Malaysia, and the Philippines are forced to work at commercial mines and logging camps run by foreign-owned companies.

The fishing sector runs on debt bondage. Workers from Myanmar, Cambodia, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and PNG itself take on recruitment debts to secure jobs on fishing vessels. Once aboard, operators manipulate those debts, withhold wages, switch contracts, restrict communication, and threaten violence to keep crews working indefinitely, particularly in tuna operations within PNG’s exclusive economic zone.¹

Sex Trafficking and Domestic Servitude

Women from Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, and the Philippines are brought into PNG and transferred to traffickers who move them to logging camps, fisheries, mining operations, and entertainment venues for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude.² Many arrive on legitimate-looking visas arranged by the same companies operating the extraction sites. PNG women and girls are also exploited internally, often lured from rural provinces to urban areas with false promises of education or work.

Children and Bride-Price

Traffickers exploit children in sex trafficking at logging camps, and families force children into street vending, begging, and illegal gold panning.¹ Some parents transfer children to other families through informal paid adoption arrangements that no one monitors or registers. Girls are particularly targeted, with adoptive families often seeking them as future sources of bride-price income.

Bride-price customs themselves create trafficking conditions. Marriages commonly involve a payment to the wife’s family, and that financial obligation can be used to compel women to remain in abusive or servile marriages. Some parents sell daughters into polygamous marriages or child sex trafficking to settle debts, resolve community disputes, or support their households.¹

What the Criminal Code Says

PNG’s primary anti-trafficking law is the Criminal Code Amendment of 2013, which added trafficking-in-persons provisions to the Criminal Code Act (Chapter 262). It covers recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring, or receiving a person through force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, or abuse of power for the purpose of exploitation.³

Penalties scale with severity:

Up to 20 years’ imprisonment for the base offense with an adult victim.³
Up to 25 years’ imprisonment where the victim is under 18.³
Life imprisonment where the circumstances were likely to cause death.³

The law has one significant structural gap. It requires proof of force, fraud, or coercion even when the victim is a child exploited for sex. Under the Palermo Protocol, any sexual exploitation of a minor qualifies as trafficking regardless of whether force or deception was used. PNG’s statute falls short of that standard, so some forms of child sex trafficking are not criminalized at all.¹ As of the most recent reporting, PNG had not ratified the Palermo Protocol.

Investigations and Prosecutions

Enforcement figures are bleak. In the most recent reporting period, the government opened five trafficking investigations but did not prosecute a single case in the national court system for the third year in a row. Two cases sat at the initial committal court stage. No convictions were recorded for the fourth consecutive year, and the government provided no update on five prosecutions initiated in earlier periods.¹

Several factors drive the failure. Law enforcement officers frequently confuse trafficking with migrant smuggling, so cases get misclassified and never reach prosecutors trained to handle them. The government has not institutionalized anti-trafficking training for police, prosecutors, or judges. And because trafficking crimes largely occur in remote areas with minimal government presence, many cases are never detected in the first place.

Corruption and Official Complicity

Corruption is a central enabler. Officials in the logging and fishing sectors accept bribes to bypass inspections, ignore worker complaints, and refrain from acting against companies accused of exploitation.² Forestry officials have reportedly issued logging permits in violation of environmental and land ownership laws, displacing communities and making them more vulnerable to trafficking as they lose their livelihoods.

The problem reaches senior ranks. In early 2023, media reports alleged the involvement of several senior police officials in a sex trafficking syndicate. Senior government officials confirmed the allegation and said authorities had opened an investigation, but no public update has been reported since.² Separately, six immigration officers were suspended in a prior period for alleged misconduct involving visa applications that increased foreign nationals’ vulnerability to trafficking. That case also went without a reported update. Police have reportedly accepted bribes to allow undocumented migrants into PNG or to ignore trafficking situations outright.

Victim Protection

Services for trafficking victims are threadbare. The government operates no trafficking-specific shelters and has historically relied almost entirely on civil society organizations. In the most recent reporting period, the government reported funding one NGO that provides services to victims of crime broadly, which could include trafficking victims.¹ In prior periods, the government reported no funding for victim services at all.²

NGOs provide limited counseling and short-term shelter, mostly through programs originally designed for gender-based violence. No services are specifically tailored to trafficking victims, and services for male victims are especially scarce. Women and children can sometimes access help through existing programs, but availability is inconsistent and depends on each NGO’s own funding.

Identification is the compounding problem. The government has standard operating procedures for identifying and referring trafficking victims but has not actually implemented them. There is no written procedural guide for frontline officers, and awareness of the SOPs among police, customs, and immigration staff remains low.¹ The SOPs also lack adequate screening measures for vulnerable groups. Without reliable identification, victims risk being treated as criminals, detained, or deported rather than helped.

National Action Plan and Coordination

PNG’s previous National Action Plan against trafficking expired, and the government has not adopted a replacement. No dedicated funding or resources have been allocated to develop or implement a new one.¹

The National Anti-Human Trafficking Committee exists on paper but struggles to function. Meetings are not held on a regular schedule, the committee lacks dedicated financial and human resources, and coordination between police, customs, and immigration remains weak.¹ Public awareness campaigns are largely absent, and the government has not conducted systematic outreach to educate communities about the risks or warning signs.

1
U.S. Department of State. 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Papua New Guinea
2
U.S. Department of State. 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report: Papua New Guinea
3
Parliament of Papua New Guinea. Criminal Code (Amendment) Act 2013