Afterthoughts

My British passport calls on “all whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance” a nostalgic reminder of the fact that passports were originally devised to facilitate freedom of movement.

We all know that they no longer do so. It is no longer possible to go anywhere outside our own country without all sorts of lets and hindrances in the form of visas, health checks, currency restrictions, customs regulations and so on.

Moreover , the non-issue or withdrawal of a passport can effectively confine a would-be traveller to his own country.

It is a wry thought that we can now travel at twice the speed of sound, but that freedom of movement has become more and more hedged about with restrictions as speed of movement has increased.

Increasingly nations impose restrictions on freedom of movement into and out of their domains.

In most countries, however, though not in all, citizens do have freedom of movement within their own country.

In Papua New Guinea, the desirability or otherwise of such unrestricted freedom of movement is currently being called into question. With the growth of shanty towns on their outskirts and a rising tide of lawlessness and violence in our towns and cities, it is being asked whether people in rural areas who have little or no chance of securing an urban job should be allowed to join the urban drift.

This is not a new issue. Between 1964 and 1972, when I was a member of the House of Assembly, many of my Highlands colleagues were expressing their concern about the drift to the towns and urging some sort of control; and in 1971, when I sponsored a Human Rights Bill, I purposely omitted freedom of movement from the rights and freedoms to be guaranteed. I did so partly because this was a sensitive issue which might endanger the bill’s chance of success. But the omission was not just a matter of political expediency. I did have serious doubts as to whether complete freedom of movement was a luxury that Papua New Guinea could afford.

The bill was passed and became the Human Rights Act 1972.

Three years later the act was superseded by the civil rights provisions of the constitution adopted at independence. These include guarantees of freedom of movement and of freedom to reside in any part of the country. One cannot but wonder whether sufficient thought was given at the time to the implications of such guarantees. Anyway, it is in the North Solomons (formerly Bouganville) Province, the home province of the chief architect of the constitution, Father John Momis, that the issue has now re-surfaced.

It seems likely that when provincial governments * start flexing their muscles they will demand, among other posers, the right to control movement into and out of their provinces. This would, among other things, enable them to control the inflow of people from other provinces into their urban as well as their rural areas. If this demand were acceded to by the National Government, it would become necessary to amend the constitution.

In any case, such a development would not affect Port Moresby, where the problems of uncontrolled migration are most acute. The City of Port Moresby is no longer, as it once was, a part of the Central Province, but is a National Capital District. Any control over migration into the capital would therefore have to be exercised either by the National Government or by the City Council, or perhaps more desirably by a statutory body set up specifically for the purpose.

Of course, to many social scientists any idea of such control is anathema, Some say it can’t be done.

Others claim that we shouldn’t try, because urbanisation is, in their view, a good thing, an aspect of human progress.

I don’t think that anyone who knows me is likely to accuse me of undervaluing human rights and civil liberties. But as I see it, Papua New Guinea is faced with the alternatives either of limiting its citizens’ freedom of movement or of allowing the peace loving and law-abiding elements of its urban populations to be deprived of a freedom which it is clearly the duty of any government to guarantee, that is, freedom from fear. This is, in fact, the form in which the issue has been raised by the people of the North Solomons.

As I see it, there are three ways forward. First, the unemployed in the cities and towns must be encouraged to return to rural life. This will only be successful if provincial governments give a nigh priority to establishing projects in their provinces which will make such a return seem attractive.

Second, those who remain must be treated humanely and considerately, as has indeed been done in Port Morseby through the establisment of “no covenant” settlements. In these settlements the poorest urban dweller can secure legal title to a small block of land and put up on it the best sort of dwelling that his means allows of, without being harassed by sophisticated building regulations.

But these two steps will be of little avail unless a third step is also taken and this is that further migration from rural to urban areas must be controlled and migration of the umemployable prevented, even though this involves some restriction on freedom of movement.

Since in PNG today we are constantly being exhorted to do things in a “Melanesian” way, it is perhaps not irrelevant to point out that traditionally in Melanesia there was very little freedom of movement. Anyone who strayed beyond the limits of tribal boundaries or narrowly defined trade routes was liable to end up as a trophy in a skull house.

So whatever else may be said about it, it cannot be claimed that control of population drift is “unmelanesian”. That it’s immensely difficult is not a good reason for not trying.