UN women focus on making PNG markets safer

Transcript

UN Women Papua New Guinea says the upgrade of markets in Port Moresby is a key way to make the city safer, particularly for women.

The UN's Safe Cities programme is being piloted in five cities around the world, including Port Moresby.

The city's busiest market, Gordon's Market, is to be redeveloped, following the successful revamp of Gerehu market.

A spokeswoman for the programme in PNG, Alethia Jimenez, says about 80 percent of market vendors are women.

Alethia Jimenez : The premise of the programme is to make sure public spaces are safe, in particular for women and girls and free of sexual harassment and free of sexual violence. Now each city of the world focuses on a different public space, some cities focus on public transport and settlements and municipalities and in Papua New Guinea, we focus on markets, because they are such an important centre for economic activity and that's also where a lot of people gather and socialise, so in the Pacific we thought it was best to focus on markets.

Amelia Langford : Yes tell me about the development of the markets.

AJ : When the programme started we started realising that the safety situation women was not isolated. It wasn't just about sexual harassment or sexual violence, there were a lot of problems with waste management and basic infrastructure, no proper drainage facilities, toilets that have been blocked and not maintained for years, broken fences, and managerial problems in terms of supervising the day to day operations. So the safety programme in Papua New Guinea was expanded to also look at all of this, if you don't have a well managed public space, you don't have a public space that can be safe for women, in particular when you have such a large concentration of people. In Gordons market and in the other markets, we have a very strong component about infrastructure development. What is the role of infrastructure and making spaces safe, inclusive, accessible. So for Gordon's Market, we're doing a strong focus on improving the toilet facilities, the fencing, the seating arrangements, the current shelters are dark, they're dingy, they're very low ceilings, so there's not enough light and obviously this creates a different environment on safety and other activities happening.

AL : So the revamp of this market, for example, do you think that could make a real difference to the way women feel in that public space?

AJ : Yeah, I think so. I think one of the main problems with the markets across Port Moresby and Papua New Guinea in general, there is always very limited maintenance. People associate in terms of the environment that they interact with. So if it's not an enabling environment, and it's full of garbage, and there's leaking sewerage and toilets are blocked and dirty all the time, people don't have that sense of responsibility to look after their space.