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.
Pacific Islands Forum Leaders have acknowledged the importance of gender equality through the Pacific Plan and in various Forum Communiqués. The purpose of this brief is to draw the attention of Pacific delegates attending the Rio +20 conference to the importance of gender equality and to ensure contributions to the global sustainable development agenda and negotiations take into consideration gender equality commitments made at the regional and international levels.
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.
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.
FSM National Department of Education.
Cook Is 2012 2014 Education Sector Strat Development Plan.
RMI 2012 2013 Education Report.
GOVERNMENT OF SAMOA MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, SPORTS & CULTURE.
Fiji 2015 2018 ESSDP (Education Sector Strategic Devt Plan).
FSM National Department of Education.
Samoa Bureau of Statistics - SPC.
Cook Islands 2010 Education Statistics Report.
Fiji 2015 Ministry of Education Annual Report.
Cook Is 2008-2023 Education master plan.
Ministry of Education Statistics Report: 2012 / Rarotonga, Cook Islands: Ministry of Education. 28 p.