Seventeen-year-old Anamalia Falemaka of Talitha Project in Tonga participated in the UNCRC side event in Samoa in March 2020 titled ‘A dive into the Blue Pacific’. Girls like Anamalia used the forum to share their experiences, lessons learned and innovative approaches at the international event. It was a learning opportunity for participants to exchange information, knowledge and challenges faced in the Pacific region. The side-event involved grassroots civil society organisations in the Pacific which engage with girls and acknowledge their role, agency and expertise.
Multiple factors can create opportunities or pitfalls on the journey towards women’s economic empowerment. This was highlighted through a panel and an interactive ‘Snakes and Ladders’ activity at ‘From participation to power: mapping economic pathways to women’s empowerment’, a side event held in the margins of the 14th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women convened by the Pacific Community (SPC) in April 2021. The side event was convened by the Pacific Women Support Unit in partnership with CARE Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu Skills Partnership and attended by more than 650 participants.
The Pacific Girl regional discussion: Girls Agency and the Pacific Girl Journey was held in June 2021. Adolescent girls and young women involved in the six initiatives supported by the Pacific Girl program across six Pacific Island countries participated in the online panel discussion, along with members of the Regional Learning Network coordinated by the Pacific Girl program. The convening was an opportunity to reflect with adolescent girls who had been participating in Pacific Girl programming at national and regional level.
More than 60 adolescent girls and young women reflected on the successes and challenges of the Pacific Girl program and shared ideas to inform future efforts at a series of virtual convenings held in May and June 2021. To ensure a safe space for open and honest dialogue, a closed panel discussion was led by adolescent girls and young women involved in six Pacific Girl initiatives across Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, and Chuuk State, Federated States of Micronesia in June.
Natasha Stott Despoja AO, Australia’s candidate for the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was one of three special guests who provided pre-recorded messages for the ‘Pacific girls and COVID-19’ webinar.
The webinar promoted girls’ involvement as essential in the recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak.
This is a pre-recorded poetry performance by Anna Jane Vea for the ‘Pacific girls and COVID-19’ webinar.
The webinar promoted girls’ involvement as essential in the recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak.
The poem ‘What I See, Hear and Understand’ was written for the Pacific Girl webinar and shares the perspective of an adolescent girl growing up in the Pacific.
This is a pre-recorded musical performance by Mia Kami for the ‘Pacific girls and COVID-19’ webinar. The song was performed live.
The webinar promoted girls’ involvement as essential in the recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak.
The song ‘Dear Society’ is for Ms Kami’s sister, reflecting on the damaging expectations that society has of women, and why it’s important for us to support each other. It was composed in honour of her older sister who passed on at the age of 15 after undergoing multiple surgeries on her face to remove a tumour.
Designed for and by girls, Pacific Girl is the only regional program in the Pacific dedicated to adolescent girls and advancing their rights and opportunities.
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 Strategic Guidance Note explains the background to and international thinking on women’s economic empowerment and then explains how the Market Development Facility programme addresses women’s economic empowerment. It contains three parts:
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.