A Journey of Commitments: 25+ Years of a Pacific Plan for Gender Equality and Women’s Rights

 

Looking Back, so we know where we are going:

I was reminded several weeks ago by a male peer from the Pacific media industry of the change-makers, the trailblazers from my mother’s generation who laid the foundation and paved the way for the women’s movement as we know it today.

Some may still not identify as feminists, but they collaborated, organised and established key women-led institutions including the Fiji Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the National Council of Women Fiji (NCWF) in the late sixties and early seventies.

This mobilisation for gender equality spanned across the health and education sectors, sports and to some degree politics, reaching out to women in rural and remote island communities and also engaged in the trade union and anti-nuclear movement, as well as broader social movements and civil society.

The mobilisation also included an active student movement and the emergence of feminist movement as well. Young women were supported to speak out against the political, social and economic causes of inequalities experienced in our region – including militarisation.

These women were part of the organising at local and national level during the United Nations (UN) Decade for Women (1975-1985).

By the time the 3rd UN Conference of Women adopted the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies, young women leaders like Tupou Vere, the General Secretary of the Fiji YWCA were members of the government delegation channelling recommendations from the women’s NGO groups into the formal negotiations and together they brought home the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies (NFLS).

Thanks to my mother, who guided me into the women’s movement, I had been aware of the decade for women, and she was the reason why I found myself in 1986 sitting on the floor of the Fiji YWCA library thumbing through the summary of commitments in a publication by the International Women’s Tribune Centre.

There they were, a series of commitments made to progress gender equality – addressing priority areas of Women and Poverty, Inequality in Access to Education, Inequality in Health Services, Violence against Women, Economic Structures and Policies, Power and Decision-making at All Levels, Women and Human Rights, Use of Mass Media, Managing Natural Resources and International Action.

I have to admit I was also in awe of the mention of national women’s machineries. No these are not grand machines to drive women around – but instead, was the recognition of the need for the establishment or strengthening of women's national machinery as an essential component of rural development strategies and of amplifying the voices of rural women so that their contributions, needs and concerns are effectively assessed and incorporated into policies, legislation, programmes and projects.

This also became a priority for the Fijian Government after the Nairobi conference.

Learning As We Go

As many of us have learnt in our journey to progress the forward looking strategies of 1985, it has not simply been about creating departments of women, but also lobbying for the investment of human, technical and financial resources to enable the national machinery to play a catalytic and strategic role within the national government system. This role, even today includes ensuring the availability and quality of gender-disaggregated data on agriculture and rural development which addresses the multiple roles of women. Women's national machinery has a significant role to spotlight the evidence of gender-disaggregated data to influence government policies, programmes and budgets.

The 1995 UN report of the implementation of the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies, ahead of the September UN 4th World Conference on Women, highlighted that collaboration between the women's national machinery, international organizations and both national and international non-governmental organizations could not be understated. It made the point that what was needed was investment in technical and financial assistance to catalyse progress. There was a need to overcome the traditionally low status of women's national machinery among other governmental agencies and the isolation of women's units from programmes and field activities of sectoral ministries.

Regional Organising and Mobilising : Amplifying a Unique Pacific Voice

The decade that followed the adoption of the NFLS saw women across the Pacific, led and supported by small departments of women, regional women’s NGO networks – such as the Pacific YWCA regional office, and the Pacific Women’s Resource Bureau of the SPC work to operationalise the policy commitments and mobilise to present a Pacific voice and perspective into what is now known as the Beijing Conference.

In 1994, Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) adopted the first regional instrument to promote gender equality: the Pacific Platform for Action on the Advancement of Women and Gender Equality (PPA). The Platform, which formed the basis of the Pacific region’s contribution at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, included 13 critical areas of concern related to health, education and training, economic empowerment, agriculture and fishing, legal and human rights, shared decision-making, environment, culture and the family, mechanisms to promote the advancement of women, violence, peace and justice, poverty, and indigenous people’s rights.

Ahead of International Women’s Day 2019, I met with Kuiniselani Toelupe Tago (https://twitter.com/lani_tago) the Director of the Social Development Programme of the Pacific Community (SPC) in Suva to talk about some very key milestones for gender equality in the Pacific region.

Tago leads a team that continues the legacy of supporting and tracking implementation of commitments to gender equality. In a milestone year for the PPA and ahead of Beijing+25, she says that there is a constant need to continue to recall, uplift, revisit, translate and resource the commitments to action.

The formulation, negotiation and adoption of the Pacific Platform for Action she says was ground-breaking as it brought together government officials and women’s NGOS to agree on priority areas for our region:

“The whole concept of mobilising a Pacific voice and consolidating a pacific perspective in global fora is a milestone. It was an opportunity for the region to come together and get organised on what would be our contributions from the Pacific for the Beijing Conference” says Tago, “It was a way of organising ourselves, recognising our isolation from the rest of the world, recognising our smallness, our unique realities as small developing island states – it was our platform to have a voice, particularly when the Pacific voiced is too often drowned out by larger countries in the Asia Pacific region”

Thirteen priorities communicated the Pacific vision for equality, peace and sustainable development. It was forward looking that even before the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (2000) and the 2030 Agenda, Pacific women addressed the trends affecting the progress towards achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women:

“The irony is we are still trying to find spaces within those global and regional dialogues on sustainable development to articulate gender equality concerns and our issues (even though) when you go back to the 1994 document, that’s what we were talking about – sustainable development and how it impacts on women’s advancement and empowerment across different areas” says Tago

Pacific Governments like Fiji adopted the Beijing Platform for Action and the 12 critical areas of concern but as I learnt from a high level government official in 2004, even with the ratification of CEDAW we still needed high level commitments to gender equality.

High level political commitments according to Tago is an extremely significant indicator of political will to progress the gender equality commitments . In 2012, the Pacific Forum Leaders, heads of state, adopted the Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration (PLGED). In 2015 they committed to Agenda 2030 – the Sustainable Development Goals:

“It actually allowed our leaders to understand the magnitude of the challenges faced by women and why we making noise across relevant and appropriate platforms”

For the work of organisations like the Pacific Community, says Tago, these commitments provide an opportunity to explore how the political will can be translated into action and resourcing and the follow through beyond the commitment of resources by tracking progress:

“It is about tracking and monitoring how you are going as a country, how you are going as a region”

Refining the Mechanisms to Promote the Advancement of Women.

A further review of the R-PPA saw the 2017 Pacific Women’s Triennial Conference adopt the Pacific Platform for Action for Gender Equality and Women’s Rights (2018 – 2030).

This revised plan maps out a renewed way forward for the SPC to be better organised to support the scaling up of the collective effort by national women’s machineries and their governments to implement gender mainstreaming approaches. This includes supporting the development of national gender policies and providing technical assistance so that national development plans are more accountable to women:

“In terms of gender mainstreaming we are making progress, integrating women’s concerns across different sectors of development”

Two key sectors that remain priority areas since the Nairobi Conference are the fisheries and agriculture sector.   

While traditionally Pacific women have been involved for generations in the management of the fisheries and agriculture sector, the application of gender equality plans at regional and national level says Tago can support the shift from simply recognising the traditional roles of women to ensuring investing integrated programmes that ensure women are accessing opportunities:

“From the perspective of SPC, we have done quite a number of things with the fisheries sector where they are know engaging their fisheries focal points in governments, whereas before, traditionally, the target is the Ministry of Women and the learning stays there. We are not only  strengthening capacity in the national ministries for women on gender mainstreaming, we are also working with the line ministries through our fisheries programmes to also start building that capacity.”

This is resulting in a shift in accountability to fisheries ministries.

One key indicator that the women’s movement keeps an eye on is the national budget, as Tago explains:

“We are trying to promote gender responsive budgeting. It’s the only way to try and strengthen budget allocations for gender equality. Essentially its about allocating budget from fisheries, from agriculture, from justice to advancing gender equality in line with their own mandates and policy direction.”

It means, she says, ensuring there is a shift from programmes for women, to a whole of government approach so that the health sector services translate into healthier women. Greater access to education, translates into improved employment conditions for women both in the informal and formal economy. It also would ensure resource allocation for energy, climate change, water and sanitation are accountable to Pacific women and youth:

“It goes back to political will. This is the Pacific and authority is very much a significant factor in the way we operate and the way we do things in Pacific societies. Once your Chief speaks. Once the Leader speaks it’s a lot of weight. And so political will and the commitment of our leaders goes a long way in terms of ensuring resources are mobilised.” 

Tago is hopeful that there will be more progress as since the adoption of the 1994 plan, there is increased awareness about the causes and consequences of gender inequalities. There is more information online and offline about women’s empowerment.

There is also greater opportunity to secure more allies including from the faith based community:

“We definitely could have been more strategic in engaging with the church sector and faith based leaders on advancing this agenda. There is opportunity for us to do this better. I see the church sector as a very resourceful sector to advance these discussions”

The Pacific Theological College as a regional educational institution is an important space to engage:

“After all women are a big part of those establishments and we probably also have to hold the churches accountable to their own commitments to women.”

Meaningful Participation - Spaces at the Table

Since the inclusion of NGO representatives on government delegations to the UN Conferences on Women, more diverse Pacific women, activists and human rights defenders are speaking out on the global stage on development, peace and humanitarian priorities such as during the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

The 2017 Pacific Women’s Conference reaffirmed the contribution of the Pacific women’s movement by providing a seat at the formal table for representatives of civil society to engage in the formal negotiations:

“The PPA and the Triennial mechanism has allowed us to formalise those connections and partnerships. There is potential to do more particular as one of the strategic areas is on partnerships, recognising that we cannot do the work ourselves. We need to engage different partners, across different sectors to achieve our goals. We are also sharing resources because we know that these are often the least resourced sectors” says Tago

Sharing resources, including a seat at the formal table can also ensure that national and regional priorities are not drowned out simply because governments and civil society alike could not afford to travel to key meetings such as the annual Commission of the Status of Women (CSW) and regional preparatory meeting.

Investment in gender equality also means building capacity to engage and lead in global discussions and policy dialogues so we can be more effective on how the region engages to further advance the agenda for women.

Ensuring sustainability also means investing in young women as they will continue to run with the baton and raise the flag for the Pacific:

“We can do better as a region in terms of organising ourselves. In terms of resourcing we are not asking for new resources, we need to really look at the distribution of our current resources and identify entry points for addressing gender issues across different sectors.”

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