Oxfam New Zealand says Papua New Guinea's women need more help to overcome domestic violence.
The Executive Director Barry Coates was in Port Moresby last week and says he'd like to see the New Zealand Government helping more.
Mr Coates says endemic tribal fighting in places like Tari has shocked his organisation, particularly when it discovered the extent of domestic violence there.
He says Medicines Sans Frontiere decided to pull out of the area for a while after describing it as a battle zone.
Barry Coates says the New Zealand government has chosen to focus more on economic development.
"Often this desire to help economic development ignores the roots of how people can become involved in economic development. They need education, they need training, they need rights, they need decent health. Working on the foundations in a society like Papua New Guinea is essential because the number of people who are in the formal ecomomy are so few out of a population of seven million people."
Barry Coates.
