Doris John sells vegetables, mostly, pawpaw and eggplants at the Gordons Market in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. This is how she makes her living since she abandoned an abusive husband. She left behind a violent relationship, only to confront a different form of violence in her workplace.

“After our sales, some people followed us and were trying to pull our bags,” says Shirley Miria, a local market vendor. “Sometimes when people are drunk they stand in your way and you have to pay them before you go out.”

On a fact-finding mission to the Pacific island-nation in March, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Rashida Manjoo, said that violence against women is a pervasive phenomenon in the country.
About 80 per cent of Port Moresby’s market vendors are women. Many are extremely poor and have survived diverse forms of gender-based violence. Most vulnerable are single mothers and widows, who are stigmatized and lack economic and social opportunities.

“My husband abandoned me when my child was 3 years old,” says vendor Marry Pialaya. “Since then I survive from the market and pay the school fee for my children. I have no support.”

But the city’s markets are not only trading places that support small-scale economic activity. In the absence of alternative places to socialize, they have also become spaces for gambling and drinking, among other activities, raising security concerns for women who depend on the markets to earn a subsistence living. In recent years, there have been reports of increasing acts of violence against women who frequent these markets.

“The market is not really safe,” says Janet Osi, a vendor at the Gerehu market. “At night there is no security. We leave our leftover vegetables and go. Then men come and cut open the bags and steal kaukau, potatoes, bananas and coconut. In the morning we come and see. We bring our complaints to the police station, but the police do not help us.”

To reduce such insecurity and violence against women and girls in public spaces, UN Women’s Safe City Port Moresby Programme, in partnership with the National Committee for the District Capital (NCDC), is working in Papua New Guinea to devise new approaches. These include a programme focused on markets as a key entry point for mobilizing women’s leadership and citizens’ rights and responsibilities. This initiative is a part of UN Women’s Global Programme “Safe Cities Free of Violence against Women and Girls�