The Pacific Girl Inception Workshop was held from 21–25 October 2019 in Suva, Fiji. The week-long workshop comprised the following meetings:
- One-day Girls Pawa Toktok with adolescent girls from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Vanuatu.
- Two-day Partners Meeting with selected civil society organisation partners from Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu.
- The Pacific Girl Regional Learning Network meeting.
This document provides details about the Australian Government’s investment in supporting adolescent girls in the Pacific. It includes information about:
Findings from this study include:
- There is a knowledge gap amongst school-aged girls related to menstruation and reproductive health more generally. This lack of knowledge also extends to the school-aged boys and mothers.
- Some teachers interviewed indicated that they were unaware that Menstrual Hygiene Management is part of the curriculum.
- Traditional beliefs and practices related to menstruation are strong in Kiribati communities, in both the urban and rural settings. These traditional beliefs affect girls’ lives in a number of intersecting ways.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
The study unearthed a large amount of information about the delivery of adult literacy programs in rural communities, as well as finding some significant gaps in available information.
There is some incongruity between how adult literacy programs are typically described and perceived in Solomon Islands and the reality on the ground.
There is a wealth of knowledge amongst several key actors in the sector that could be harnessed more effectively to improve the delivery of adult literacy programs.
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 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 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.
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.
Every day, 20,000 girls below age 18 give birth in developing countries. Births to girls also occur in developed countries but on a much smaller scale. Most of the world’s births to adolescents— 95 per cent—occur in developing countries, and nine in 10 of these births occur within marriage or a union. About 19 per cent of young women in developing countries become pregnant before age 18. Girls under 15 account for 2 million of the 7.3 million births that occur to adolescent girls under 18 every year in developing countries.
This factsheet explains the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) by answering the following questions:
- What is CEDAW?
- What is the role of the UN CEDAW Committee?
- What are CEDAW General Recommendations?
- How is the implementation of CEDAW monitored?
- What are Concluding Observations?
- What is the CEDAW 'Follw Up' Procedure?
- What is the CEDAW Optional Protocol?
- What is the status of CEDAW ratification and reporting in the • Pacific?
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.