Violence following accusations of sorcery is a serious and continuing problem in Papua New Guinea, and it is treated here as a matter of documented harm rather than as an item of exotic interest.
The underlying premise is widespread: that death and grave illness have causes, and that a person may be responsible. Where that premise meets a sudden death, a grieving family and no other explanation, an accusation can follow, and the accused, disproportionately women and often those without male relatives to defend them, may be tortured or killed by a crowd. The phenomenon is usually abbreviated in Papua New Guinean policy documents as sorcery accusation related violence.
The law made this worse before it made it better. The Sorcery Act of 1971 criminalised the practice of sorcery, which had the effect of treating the accusation as potentially well founded, and a belief that the deceased had been killed by sorcery could be raised in mitigation on a murder charge. Whatever the intention, the effect was that the legal system partially underwrote the logic of the killings.
The Sorcery Act was repealed in 2013, and the death penalty was extended to killings arising from sorcery accusations in the same period. Prosecution remains difficult, because attacks are often committed by crowds in remote areas and witnesses are neighbours.
Churches, Papua New Guinean human rights organisations and the government have worked on the problem together through a national action plan, and some of the most effective interveners have been church workers who can address the belief system from inside rather than dismissing it from outside. Reported incidence has not clearly fallen.