Why a Part of Papua New Guinea Is Eyeing Independence

Nearly two decades after a bloody civil war ended, Papua New Guinea’s province of Bougainville in the South Pacific is a step closer to independence after a referendum showed an overwhelming majority want to establish a new nation. But the way forward now that votes have been counted is far from clear.

A group of islands comprising a semi-autonomous region that is part of Papua New Guinea. Settled around 30,000 years ago, its name today comes from its first Western visitor, the French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, who arrived in 1768 (the flowering vine Bougainvillea is also named after him). The bulk of its quarter of a million people reside on the main Bougainville Island, which is roughly the size of Jamaica. Although geographically part of the Solomon Islands, it became part of German New Guinea at the end of the 19th century under an agreement with the British, who created their own protectorate in the rest of the Solomons chain. Australia began administrating Bougainville after World War I and (except for a brief Japanese occupation during World War II) played a role until PNG achieved independence in 1975.