PAPUA New Guinea’s support for the death penalty and its struggles with gender equality and police brutality have been criticised at a United Nations review in Geneva.

The country’s human rights record was scrutinised at its second Universal Periodic Review on Friday night.

Several countries encouraged PNG to decriminalise homosexuality, to improve its rates of violence against women – some of the worst in the world – and to put a stop to police brutality.

They also recommended that PNG establish a national human rights body and impose a moratorium on the death penalty.

But Papua New Guinea’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Fred Sarufa, said the country would not be swayed by international pressure to outlaw the death penalty.

Capital punishment has never been outlawed in PNG, but its use was reactivated by the government in 2013 after a spate of violent killings drew international attention.

Mr Sarufa said PNG has a right to the death penalty and it will not be deterred.

“We have a law that prescribes the death penalty as part and parcel of our judicial system and until and unless the appropriate authority, which is the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea decides, based on the sentiments of Papua New Guineans, we still have in the penal code the death penalty,” Mr Sarufa told a nearly empty hall in Geneva.

Several other countries also raised concerns about the rights of the LGBT community in a country where the penal code criminalises sexual relations “against the order of nature,” which has been interpreted to apply to same-sex relationships.