Carolyne Nimop is sitting on a wooden bench in the sunshine next to her colleagues Giniat Upagi and Yane Pasen: Carolyn and Yane are both rural magistrates, while Giniat is a Peace Officer.

All have travelled for days to reach Loupom Island, where they are taking part in child protection training – a workshop focused on giving village courts officials the necessary skills to handle child cases in the rural legal system.

“Giniat, Yane and I are from the Wopten One village court,” says Carolyne. “We walked for three days on bush tracks across several mountains before reaching the coastline, and traveled another 45 minutes by boat to Loupom Island to attend this training.”

In total, there are more than 50 court officials from Amazon Bay in Central Province in attendance. The training program is one of six workshops being rolled out in Central Province by ChildFund Papua New Guinea in partnership with the Department of Justice and Attorney General, and has the funding support of the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).

For Sally Beadle, ChildFund’s PNG’s team leader for gender and child protection, the workshops ensure that officials working on the frontline are aware of their roles and responsibilities. She says: “Village courts are a critical partner for promoting internationally established equal rights and protections for women and children at the local level.”