Papua New Guinea’s Sorcery Act Repeal and the Criminalization of Sorcery Accusations

Record summary

Papua New Guinea repealed the Sorcery Act in 2013 while strengthening criminal penalties for violence associated with sorcery accusations. The episode is identifiable through parliamentary, legal, and human-rights documentation and offers a clear case for studying how modern states classify occult claims. It also illustrates a distinction between criminalizing alleged sorcery and criminalizing violence attributed to it. The reform did not end accusations or attacks, and later reports debate enforcement, customary authority, church intervention, and the social conditions behind recurring cases.