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Bougainville, the easternmost province (or sole autonomous region) of Papua New Guinea, has a long history of support for secession and independence, centred on geography, culture and ethnicity. Nationalism intensified with alienation of land by a multinational copper mine during the 1970s, resulting in the island's unilateral declaration as the Republic of the North Solomons, a few weeks before the independence of Papua New Guinea in 1975. That was ignored by PNG and other governments. Nationalism resurfaced in violent form after bitter disputes over the impact of the mine, which was forced to close in 1989, prompting what became a civil war led by the Bougainville Revolutionary Army who sought independence. After foreign intervention, peace was eventually restored in 2001: the Bougainville Peace Agreement gave the province greater autonomy and promised a referendum on independence. Within Bougainville, the contested role of mining is central to economic development, which is currently heavily dependent on aid. In a late-2019 referendum, 98 percent of voters supported independence. The Papua New Guinea government need not acquiesce to that outcome and has delayed negotiations that would shape a new political future. Such negotiations exist within a geopolitical context where a Chinese presence is increasingly significant, and where most regional nations, including Papua New Guinea and Australia, prefer the status quo. ; peer-reviewed

"This report examines the governmental organizational structures used in three Australian-led interventions in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the Southwest Pacific regions: Bougainville, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands. Whole-of-government efforts requiring coordination across many parts of the Australian Government characterized each of these unique operations, in which different organisational approaches were used to manage the participation of various agencies. During the course of the research, it became apparent that, over time, numerous lessons were learned as branches of the Australian Government gained experience in how best to interact with one another and manage complex operations of this type. The report describes the key Australian agencies that participated in the three operations, the coordinating mechanisms they adopted, and the specific roles they played. In addition to providing insights that should be useful for the preparation and conduct of operations outside Australia, the information in this report also should be useful in terms of better whole-of-government operations inside Australian territory" --

There are often difficulties in accommodating the interests of minority nationalities within nation-states. The proliferation of states created by decolonization has magnified such problems. Colonial borders often included groups with emerging identities, and the problems of fostering national cohesion within borders encompassing such diversity has sometimes been especially intense. ; peer-reviewed

Discusses the conflicts resulting from ethnonationalism, self-determination, and globalization, by studying the example of Bougainville, province of Papua New Guinea, and the evolution of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) separatist movement; since the 1980s, chiefly. Some focus on military confrontation between the Papua New Guinea Defense Force (PNG DF), role of international actors, and the Panguna mine.

In 2022, consultations between the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) and the Government of Papua New Guinea (GoPNG) on the implementation of the result of the Bougainville independence referendum of December 2019 made only slow progress. This was in part due to the elections in Papua New Guinea (PNG), which distracted Papua New Guinea's political elite for months, but it was also due to a more general disinterest, and perhaps even delaying tactics, on the PNG side. The ABG has declared repeatedly that nothing but full independence is its goal, referring to the 97.7 percent vote for independence in the referendum. At the end of 2022, ABG-GoPNG consultations were stuck. Both sides, however, remain committed to a negotiated solution (Contemp Pac/GIGA).

What started as a movement to demand a distributive justice in mining revenue in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, the conflict turned into the struggle for secession. From 1970's the demand for secession have been rife and despite early agreement for more autonomy and more mining revenue for the autonomous region, the demand never faded. Under Francis Ona's Bougainville Revolutionary Army, the movement take a new heights. Bougainville Revolutionary Army took coercive measure to push the government to acknowledge their demands by taking over the mine at Panguna. Papua New Guinean government response was also combative and further exacerbate the issue. Papua New Guinean Defense Force involvement adding the issue of human rights into the discourse. This paper will seek to analyze the normative question surrounding the legitimacy of the right to secession in Bougainville Island. The protracted conflict has halted any form of development in the once the most prosperous province of Papua New Guinea and should Bougainville Island become independent, several challenges will be waiting for Bougainvilleans.

The inhabitants of Pororan Island, a small group of 'saltwater people' in Papua New Guinea, are intensely interested in the movements of persons across the island and across the sea, both in their everyday lives as fishing people and on ritual occasions. From their observations of human movements, they take their cues about the current state of social relations. Based on detailed ethnography, this study engages current Melanesian anthropological theory and argues that movements are the Pororans' predominant mode of objectifying relations. Movements on Pororan Island are to its inhabitants what roads are to 'mainlanders' on the nearby larger island, and what material objects and images are to others elsewhere in Melanesia