Statistically more vulnerable in PNG
Interviews conducted by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in 2003 indicated criminal groups used the conflict to justify rape. A nun told UNIFEM that life for women during the conflict was like living “between two guns”. In the years following the conflict, women continued to feel threatened by weapons still in circulation, according to one local development agency cited by UNIFEM. But even outside this bloody theatre of war, and years later, the situation remains grim for women. The problem is bad. We pretend that it is not there, Ume Wainetti, head of the Family and Sexual Action Committee, a government programme set up to address gender violence, told IRIN in March 2012.