The Revised Pacific Platform For Action is a regional charter developed and agreed to by representatives from all Pacific Island countries and territories. It has four strategic themes:
- Mechanisms to promote the advancement of women.
- Women’s legal and human rights.
- Women’s access to services.
- Economic empowerment of women.
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.
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.
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.
Health pandemics have specific and severe impacts on the lives of women and girls. Since the COVID-19 outbreak first had reported cases, the gendered impacts began being documented in the Pacific and across the world. Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by crises. Existing gender inequalities are exacerbated during a crisis, with the result that women and girls face even higher rates of violence, sexual abuse and control from their husbands, partners and families.
This study deals with research on eight critical areas of concern covered in the Revised Pacific Platform for Action 2005-2015: education, health, climate change and environment, economic empowerment, gender mainstreaming, leadership and decision-making, violence against women and human rights.
While gender research on each issue exists in one way or another in the Pacific, there are many unknowns as to the scope, nature, and quality of this research. This study therefore:
- Maps and provides a gap analysis of existing gender research in the eight thematic areas.
Tonga 2009 HIES Report. Noumea, New Caledonia: Pacific Community (SPC). 111 p.
Cook Islands - Rarotonga: household income and expenditure survey (HIES), report 1998.
French Polynesia HIES 2015 FR. . Noumea, New Caledonia: Secretariat of the Pacific Community. 16 p.
Tuvalu: household income and expenditure survey (HIES), Report 2010. Noumea, New Caledonia: Pacific Community (SPC). 63 p.
Anon. 2017. Tonga: household income and expenditure, survey 2015-2016. Noumea, New Caledonia: Pacific Community (SPC). 247 p.
Tokelau National Statistics Office, Office of the Council for the Ongoing Government of Tokelau, SPC.
Fertility trends in Pacific island countries and territories. Noumea, New Caledonia: Pacific Community. 105 p.
Fiji: household income and expenditure survey (HIES), Draft Poverty 2008-2009.
Cook Islands: household income and expenditure survey (HIES), report 2005-2006.
Solomon Islands 2005 2006 HIES Province Report. Noumea, New Caledonia: Pacific Community. 215 p.
Republic of the Marshall Islands Integrated Child Nutrition and Health Survey 2017: final report. Noumea, New Caledonia: Pacific Community (SPC). 202 p.
Vanuatu 2010 HIES Report. Noumea, New Caledonia: Pacific Community (SPC). 169 p.