Archipelago’s flags replace Papua New Guinean ones on government buildings ahead of voting in referendum

Bougainville will head to the polls tomorrow to decide whether the region will seek independence from Papua New Guinea and become the world’s newest country, in a referendum that has been 20 years in the making.

The small archipelago of islands about 700km east of mainland Papua New Guinea, will hold a referendum that its people have been looking forward to since the ceasefire that ended a brutal civil war in 1998 and the signing of the Bougainville Peace Agreement in 2001.

Bougainvilleans will vote in an independence referendum this weekend, the result of a unique Melanesian process of reconciliation

Thirty years ago Bougainville lost 20,000 people in a brutal civil war that lasted almost a decade.

This week Bougainvilleans will go to the polls to vote on independence from Papua New Guinea, but in a very different mood – one of joy and celebration. Underlying this historic occasion is a resolve by all sides to honour the fallen, but never again return to conflict.

It is a vote that has been 20 years in the making. On Saturday, residents of the remote archipelago in the Solomon Sea will start to decide their future

On Saturday, the people of Bougainville – a small archipelago of islands flung 700km off the coast of Papua New Guinea in the Solomon Sea – will begin voting in a referendum that will determine if their beloved homeland will become the world’s newest nation.

It is a vote that has been nearly 20 years in the making. In 2001, as part of a peace agreement to end a devastating decade-long civil war, the government of Papua New Guinea promised the population of Bougainville, then about 200,000 people, that they would one day be able to cast a vote to decide their future.