Located in the north, Manus Island is the smallest province in PNG with an area of 2,100 square kilometres. As of a 2011 Census, it had a population of 50,321.
Manus is a traditional name for a group of fishing people who inhabit coastal areas of Manus Island. The name Manus differentiates them from other groups with differing customs and languages.
These people were good seafarers and traders. There is a traditional story that they arrive in the Admiralty Islands some hundred of years ago sailing in 200 canoes from the east.
The offshore immigration detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, which is set to be expanded under the Australian federal government's new asylum seeker policy, is one of the most controversial processing centres in the Australian network.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sealed the deal with his counterpart, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, in Queensland on Friday 19th July 2013 in a mutually beneficial pact: PNG will take in asylum seekers in exchange for a wide range of economic and social benefits, including funding assistance for education and health reforms, as well as security. The pact is reported to costs billions of dollars.
The Admiralty Islands are a group of eighteen islands in the Bismarck Archipelago, to the north of New Guinea in the south Pacific Ocean. These are also sometimes called the Manus Islands, after the largest island. These rainforest-covered islands form part of Manus Province, the smallest and least-populous province of Papua New Guinea. The total area is 2,100 km2 (810 sq mi). Many of the islands are atolls and uninhabited.
The larger islands in the center of the group are Manus Island and Los Negros Island. The other larger islands are Tong Island, Pak Island, Rambutyo Island, Lou Island, and Baluan Island to the east, Mbuke Island to the south and Bipi Island to the west of Manus Island. Other islands that have been noted as significant places in the history of Manus include Ndrova Island, Pitylu Island and Ponam Island.