Vanuatu Women's Centre (VWC) Coordinator, Merilyn Tahi, elaborates on the services her organisation provides Ni-Van women and the research VWC has conducted on violence against women in Vanuatu.
How can we encourage community members to take an active role in eliminating violence against women? Do the police play an important role in this? Hear what EribwebweTakirua, Police Inspector from the Domestic Violence and Sexual Offences Unit, Kiribati has to say about this.
Adolescent girls in the Pacific face challenges because they are girls; and they can also be discriminated against for other reasons, such as having a disability or getting pregnant. In this short video, adolescent girls from the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu talk about the issues that are important to them – such as education and climate change, the challenges they face – such as violence in their homes and cyber bullying, and the strategies they believe will work to empower adolescent girls in the region.
This checklist proposes actions in five specific areas:
- Learn from women’s experience and support their leadership.
- Develop and implement gender-sensitive responses to COVID-19.
- Support women’ economic security.
- Prioritise support to domestic violence survivors.
- Ensure continued access to health services.
This study was commissioned to increase the visibility of young persons with disabilities to policymakers and advocates. It provides:
- An up-to-date analysis on the situation of young persons with disabilities concerning discrimination and sexual violence, including the impact on their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
- A detailed assessment of legal, policy, and programming developments and specific good practices in service delivery along with best-standard prevention and protection measures.
The Pacific Women Advisory Group on Research is comprised of specialists in gender research expertise who have interest in the Pacific region including representatives of research institutions, development partners, civil society organisations, regional organisations, governments that are engaging in gender research as well as individual research practitioners. Guided by the Research Strategy, the Advisory Group provides advice to Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on the strategic direction of the Pacific Women research program.
This is a 2013 supplement to the 700 page 1998 text ‘Law for Pacific Women: A Legal Rights Handbook (1998) by Imrana Jalal.’ The Handbook and the Supplement examine legislation, court decisions, common law, legal structures and legal practices in the Pacific Islands through a human rights, feminist lens. The Handbook and Supplement are designed to be used together. The Supplement covers the laws and legal processes relating to:
- Violence against women.
- Family law.
- Social and economic issues.
- Women as criminal defendants.
This research resource document provides guidance on how to best measure women’s and girls’ empowerment in impact evaluations, based on the experiences of J-PAL affiliated researchers around the world. This research resource document offers practical tips for measuring women’s and girls’ empowerment in impact evaluations. It is designed to support the work of monitoring and evaluation practitioners, researchers, and students.
This is a global annual report for the UN Trust Fund to End Violence againts Women. Global statistics include:
- 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual imtimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.
- About 7 % of women have been sexually assaulted by someone other than their partner.
- More than 125 million women and girls alive today have undergone some form of female genital mutilation.
- More than 700 million women worldwide alive today were married before their 18th birthdays.
This booklet highlights some of the work of Australia’s aid program to support an end to all forms of violence against women and girls, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. This includes providing services for women who have been affected by violence, programs that improve access to justice for survivors and help women rebuild their lives, education to change attitudes towards violence, and engaging men and boys in initiatives to prevent violence from occurring in the first place.
This toolkit is a step-by-step guide to every stage of the project cycle for projects targeted at ending violence against women – from basic concepts such as gender, human rights and project design through to needs assessments, workplans, data collection, media outreach, stakeholder relationships and monitoring and evaluation techniques. It incorporates a number of group activities, tips, templates and online resources, as well as a list of potential funding sources.
In the Pacific region, there has been some significant progress towards achieving the SRHR goals embedded in international commitments. The number of Pacific Island countries with national population policies is steadily increasing and the integration of sexual and reproductive health into primary health programs has also improved. Reducing child mortality is an area where the Pacific region is doing particularly well, with 10 of the 14 Forum island countries on track to achieving this goal.
This publication is a ‘one-stop-shop’ for international human rights conventions and other related documents. It is designed to be a reference for judges, magistrates, legal practitioners, law students human rights advocates, civil society representatives and policy makers across the Pacific.
In the Pacific region 56 per cent of the population is under the age of 25. Pacific young people have diverse needs, opportunities and experiences, living as they do across 20,000 islands around the Pacific Ocean. This dynamic group of young people live in urban and rural areas, on remote islands and in large cities. They have diverse sexualities and gender identities. They are young people living with disabilities, they are sex workers, they are young women and men living with HIV and AIDS.
This annual report notes that the eyes of the world were focused on Samoa and the wider region for the Small Islands Developing States Conference and UN Women’s Executive Director, Phumzile Mlambo Nguka’s first visit to the Pacific.
Highlights from the year included:
- The launch of UN Women’s Markets for Change project.
- A highly visible 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence campaign.
This short policy brief states women’s empowerment is important because:
- Women’s empowerment contributes to economic growth.
- Marginalisation of women in Pacific island labour markets reduces the labour ‘talent pool’.
- The high level of violence against women is a major barrier to development.
It suggests a number of actions that can be taken:
- Temporary Special Measures to raise women’s political participation can increase women in decision making which can result in broad gains in women’s empowerment.
This paper supports the case for a transformative goal on gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment. The case for a stand-alone gender-related goal, as well as addressing gender priorities into each goal, has been actively supported by Pacific Leaders and the women’s movement. The importance of a standalone goal in post-2015 development agenda was evident at the 12th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women held 2013.
Emerging policy lessons from World Bank evaluations of programs to prevent violence against women include:
- Programs to increase women’s economic empowerment may reduce GBV by increasing women’s bargaining power and ability to leave abusive relationships, though there are also risks that increased empowerment could threaten household patriarchies and exacerbate violence.
Violence against women and girls is a grave violation of human rights. It also has tremendous costs for individuals and societies, especially in the Pacific, from greater health care expenses to losses in productivity to a pervasive sense of fear and insecurity.
Decades of mobilising by women’s movements have put ending gender-based violence high on national and international agendas. An unprecedented number of countries have laws against domestic violence, sexual assault and other forms of violence.
The UN Women Fiji Multi-Country Office, in consultation with partners, identified two main challenges facing Pacific organisations and networks to scale up efforts to end violence against women in the Pacific region. These were:
- Limited access to financial resources, and related needs for skills building in project, financial and organisational management.
- Knowledge and capacity needed to strengthen rights based approaches for survivors of violence against women.