To better understand the nature and availability of counselling services for gender-based violence, a survey involving a self-assessment questionnaire was conducted to map counselling service providers across 14 Pacific Island countries. This was followed up with 47 key stakeholder interviews and nine focus group discussions. In-country consultations were also conducted in Fiji and Vanuatu. Fiji was selected because it has a wide range of counselling services and Vanuatu was selected as it provided an opportunity to review a model for delivering services across a dispersed island group.
This volume critically interrogates the relation between gender violence and human rights as Fiji, Papua New Guinea nad Vanuatu and their communities and citizens engage with, appropriate, modify and at times resist human rights principles and their implications for gender violence. It is grounded in extensive anthropological, historical and legal research.
Chapter titles are:
- Villages, Violence and Atonement in Fiji.
- ‘Lost in Translation’: Gender Violence, Human Rights and Women’s Capabilities in Fiji.
The research demonstrated that, in general, women’s increased involvement in community financial management and income generation has not necessarily led to a redistribution of caring work or other unpaid household and community responsibilities.
Findings from participatory action research undertaken with family and sexual violence service providers, advocates, businesses, and their employees in Papua New Guinea strongly indicate that workplace strategies should be modified to reflect cultural and other contextual specificities. In particular, workplace strategies should reflect local understandings about what constitutes family and sexual violence; who may perpetrate it and who may be victimised by family and sexual violence; and what supports are available to victims of family and sexual violence.
The project aims to add content to the international legal principle of due diligence in the context of state responsibility to end violence against women. It seeks to create compliance indicators that are concrete and measurable across regions. The project examines four questions:
- What is generally understood to be the content of the due diligence principle - by governments, civil society advocates, and international legal scholars and experts working on violence against women?
Lessons from the UNFPA’s process of conducting researching violence against women in Kiribati and Solomon Islands included:
- There is overwhelming evidence that the studies in the Solomon Islands and Kiribati were generally been carried out appropriately and effectively.
- There is an overriding sense of achievement, all field workers came back safely and intact, a phenomenal job was done and an enormous amount of data was collected with high response rates and disclosure rates.
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.
This mapping paper includes examples of efforts by the private sector in the Pacific to address violence against women and provides examples of how States can begin to calculate the costs of violence to a nation’s economy. While there are some great examples of private sector initiatives, there is little information available on the successes and impacts of these initiatives.
Researchers from Australian National University, University of Papua New Guinea and the Lae University of Technology explored the connections between women’s experiences of seeking support to address family and sexual violence and their children’s well-being and opportunities for education in Papua New Guinea’s second largest city, Lae in April 2018. The research involved community focus group discussions town-hall style meetings, individual in-depth semi-structured interviews and meetings with service providers including police, the public solicitor’s office, schools and Femili PNG.
A report from Femili PNG and the Australian National University (ANU) shows that the issuing of protection orders by the Lae District Court is becoming more efficient. The data, was collected by Femili PNG and analysed by the ANU, covered almost three years from August 2014 to May 2018. The data showed that the average time taken to get an interim protection order (IPO) is 15.9 days. Almost one fifth (18%) were issued on the same day, and around half (51%) were issued within a week.
A report from Femili PNG and the Australian National University (ANU) shows that the issuing of protection orders by the Lae District Court is becoming more efficient. The data, was collected by Femili PNG and analysed by the ANU, covered almost three years from August 2014 to May 2018. The data showed that the average time taken to get an interim protection order (IPO) is 15.9 days. Almost one fifth (18%) were issued on the same day, and around half (51%) were issued within a week.
This study was a collaborative effort between the Tuvalu Ministry of Home Affairs, the Gender Affairs Department of the Office of the Prime Minister and the Fusi Alofa Association of Tuvalu (Tuvalu’s Disabled Persons’ Organisation).
This study was a collaborative effort between the Tuvalu Ministry of Home Affairs, the Gender Affairs Department of the Office of the Prime Minister and the Fusi Alofa Association of Tuvalu (Tuvalu’s Disabled Persons’ Organisation).
This study was a collaborative effort between the Tuvalu Ministry of Home Affairs, the Gender Affairs Department of the Office of the Prime Minister and the Fusi Alofa Association of Tuvalu (Tuvalu’s Disabled Persons’ Organisation).
The State, Society and Governance in Melanesia program at the Australian National University and the International Women’s Development Agency undertook the Do No Harm research project in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea to understand whether and in what ways economic inclusion and empowerment initiatives affect women’s experience of violence.
This research, exploring connections between women’s economic empowerment initiatives and increased violence against women in Solomon Islands, found that any equation between women’s economic empowerment and domestic violence is not always straightforward.
This research, exploring connections between women’s economic empowerment initiatives and increased violence against women in two provinces of Papua New Guinea and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, found that the economic advancement that many women are achieving rarely translates into actual empowerment, because they are rarely able to negotiate a decrease in domestic workloads when they bring income — often the only income — into the household.
This research, exploring connections between women’s economic empowerment initiatives and increased violence against women in two provinces of Papua New Guinea and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, found that the economic advancement that many women are achieving rarely translates into actual empowerment, because they are rarely able to negotiate a decrease in domestic workloads when they bring income — often the only income — into the household.