Every day, 20,000 girls below age 18 give birth in developing countries. Births to girls also occur in developed countries but on a much smaller scale. Most of the world’s births to adolescents— 95 per cent—occur in developing countries, and nine in 10 of these births occur within marriage or a union. About 19 per cent of young women in developing countries become pregnant before age 18. Girls under 15 account for 2 million of the 7.3 million births that occur to adolescent girls under 18 every year in developing countries.
The Pacific Young Women’s Leadership Alliance is a network of regional, international, and locally based organisations working with and for young women leaders across the Pacific region. The Alliance’s strategy focuses on five key themes, supporting young women to be: Safe, Respected, Included, Connected, and Skilled. The goal of the Alliance is to provide a network to share information, and best practices and resources; and provide a united voice to ensure that governments, donors, and other stakeholders are accountable to the needs of young Pacific women.
The top findings of the evaluation of the Breakthrough Project are:
1. Global Fund grantmaking contributed to impact at three levels: on the individual lives of over half a million women and girls, their families and communities, on the sustainability and capacities of the grantee organisations and networks, and through concrete political and economic gains for gender equality.
This report focuses on the experiences of adolescent pregnancy and motherhood. It highlights the challenges that adolescent mothers face when pregnant and as mothers.
Over the last decade, young women’s fertility rates (ages 15-19) across the Pacific have declined in eight countries. However, in five countries (Marshall Islands, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) rates have remained high, at over 50 of births to women 15-19 years per 1,000 women 15-19 years.
This review looks at progress toward the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action’s goals on the following themes:
- Sexual and reproductive health and rights.
- Health, morbidity and mortality.
- Family wellbeing and society.
- Gender and empowering women.
- Population and Sustainable development.
- Population change and social development challenges.
- Urbanisation and internal migration.
- International migration and development.
- Population development and education.
The reproductive risk index ranks 21 of the 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) according to ten key sexual and reproductive health and rights indicators. In doing so, the RRI provides a comprehensive overview of the sexual and reproductive health and rights environments in individual PICTs, how these compare to each other, and combines them to build a clear regional picture of sexual and reproductive health and rights.
The global process under way to develop a new international development framework after the Millennium Development Goals expire in 2015 provides an opportunity to address the lack of power that women have to influence decision making compared to men. To be successful the framework needs to take into account the obstacles to gender equality; how and why these are being perpetuated; and evidence of measures that have proved successful in addressing them.
This summary document provides information to influence priorities post-2015 by discussing:
In the lead-up to the Beijing Conference, the Pacific Islands region adopted the Pacific Platform for Action (PPA). Its purpose was to identify regional issues and priorities within those Critical Areas and to put them into a local context. The framework was subsequently reviewed and a Revised Pacific Platform for Action on Advancement of Women and Gender Equality (RPPA) was endorsed in 2004.
Highlights of this Pacific summary of the 2012 Women’s Economic Empowerment Index include:
- Fiji is the highest ranked Pacific country (81 out of 128 ranked countries).
- Solomon Islands (125/128) and Papua New Guinea (126/128) are in the bottom five, ranked lower than all Sub-Saharan African countries except Sudan.
The overall goal of the Gender Equality in Political Governance program was to advance gender equality in political governance in the Pacific and its objective was to increase political participation by women as active citizens and leaders. Important strategies employed by the programme include building broad base support for women’s participation in political governance through the development of community-base level education and the introduction of temporary special measures.
The Australian Government is committed to the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – agreed targets set by the world’s nations to reduce poverty by 2015. The MDGs include halving extreme poverty, getting all children into school, closing the gap on gender inequality, saving lives lost to disease and lack of health care, protecting the environment and working on a global partnership for development. Gender equality is central to achieving these goals.
Pacific Women program activities support the Bougainville Gender Investment Plan, which prioritises the following objectives:
- Reducing family and sexual violence and assist survivors of violence.
- Strengthen women’s leadership.
- Improve women’s economic opportunities.
This report includes the following highlights:
This report contains highlights for the Pacific Women in Papua New Guinea program, including the conclusion from the mid-term evaluation that the program is on track to achieve its objectives, and that the program uses evidence to inform policy and practice.
Other highlights include:
In rural Papua New Guinea, where over 80 per cent of the population live, nearly 50 per cent of women birth outside of a health centre. One out of 25 women dies of pregnancy related causes and 52 babies out of every 1000 born die before their first birthday. For every woman who dies in childbirth or pregnancy, another 30 will suffer lifelong pain or disability from pregnancy-related complications. These alarmingly high death rates are partly the result of health centres being many hours walk away from remote communities and lacking in basic drugs, supplies and suitably trained staff.
This review found that UNICEF’s Child Protection Programme is aligned with Pacific country commitments to upholding children’s rights, and its approaches largely target regional priorities, structures and gaps. Specific findings included:
- There is a need to better contextualise child protection system strengthening approaches to national and local circumstances, and to sharpen messages so that the goals are explicitly communicated and the intended impact is more in focus.
The purpose of the workshop was to share findings from the review of the Pacific Women Fiji Country Plan and the Pacific Women Year Three Evaluation and consider the implications of findings for future Pacific Women programming in Fiji.
The workshop was designed to maximise input from local experts, as well as provide the opportunity for peer sharing. In addition, exercises were developed to ensure partners strengthened or developed new relationships with each other.
This internal end of project review evaluates the effectiveness of the Community Workshop Series and found evidence of contributing to positive changes in community and individual gender roles, norms and sexual reproductive and maternal health related attitudes and behaviours. The review also makes recommendations for adapting the Community Workshop Series to better incorporate family and sexual violence and to be taken to scale.
Key findings from the evaluation include:
- Family and Sexual Violence Units (FSVUs) are highly relevant for expanding services to survivors of family and sexual violence (FSV).
- The effectiveness of FSVU services is constrained by internalised gender norms of male dominance and authority and women’s dependence and obedience. These internalised gender norms have a profound impact on the quality of services offered to FSVU survivors.
Agriculture constitutes over 65% of the country’s TOP $26 million exports (approximately AU$16 million) and accounts for 14% of Tonga’s GDP. Two-thirds of Tonga’s households are involved in agricultural production, with approximately 2.4% of households operating as commercial producers in the formal economy. Another 39% of households produce some crops to sell through markets and roadside stalls in the informal economy.
The Pacific Community (SPC), in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank and UN Women conducts assessments of national governments’ capacity to conduct gender mainstreaming of programs and policies. The purpose of gender mainstreaming is to promote good governance and sustainable development through the integration of gender analysis at all levels of government.