Storying Manus Women and Girls into Asylum Seeker and PNG Women’s Rights Discourses Surrounding the Manus Regional Processing Centre, 2012–19

Abstract

ABSTRACT Between 2012 and 2019 two important human rights discourses ran concurrently in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The first involved the rights of asylum seekers detained in Australia’s offshore Regional Processing Centre (RPC) on Manus Island. The second related to PNG women’s and girls’ rights amid the epidemic levels of violence against women and girls in PNG. As the PNG province that hosted the RPC, Manus provides a lens for examining these two rights discourses during this period. In this article I make three arguments. First, the RPC had local gendered impacts. Secondly, there was a gap between these two rights discourses which involved the privileging of the human rights of asylum seekers on Manus. Thirdly, this gap led to the neglect of the RPC’s lasting gendered impacts on the local community. The analytical framework used in this article activates Indigenous narratives of human mobility in order to centre a feminine Manus perspective in relation to these rights discourses.