Feminist Footsteps: A View from the Pacific Women's Triennial Conference: Climate Justice in a Time of COVID19

Feminist Footsteps: A View from the Pacific Women's Triennial Conference: Climate Justice in a Time of COVID19

Like all emergencies and humanitarian crises, the Covid-19 pandemic is hitting women and girls the hardest, particularly those living in poverty and facing marginalization. At the same time, diverse Pacific women leaders are rising up to respond to intersecting climate and health crises by integrating COVID-19 prevention measures into locally-led disaster response and recovery efforts.

The Shifting the Power Coalition today celebrated how diverse Pacific island women leaders are learning and working together to drive a locally-led, gender responsive and disability inclusive approach to health emergencies and climate-related disasters in the region during a side event at the Pacific Women’s Triennial Conference titled Shifting the Power & Mobilising Diverse Women's Leadership in Response to COVID-19 and Climate Change

Drawing on insights from the Coalition’s 2020 report “Mobilising Women’s Leadership in Response to COVID-19 and TC Harold” and the Pacific Disability Forum's Pacific Islands Policy Platform on Gender and Disability Inclusion in COVID-19 Response as well as recent women-led emergency responses to TC Yasa and TC Harold in 2020, the panel moderated by the Executive Director of ActionAid Australia – Michelle Higelin featured leaders from women-led disability organisations, young women and rural women leaders from the partner organisations of the Shifting the Power Coalition. 

Enabling women’s leadership in times of crisis for women with disabilities means investing in enhancing their capacity says Lanieta Tuimabu the Office Manager of the Fiji Disabled People’s Federation: “What is critical is us leading in crisis response. We have the lived experience and can provide the best advice on disability inclusion. It is best to consult with us.”

As a Gender and Disability Rights Focal Point of the Coalition Tuimabu says collaboration and resourcing are important to enable the leadership of women with disabilities: “We also see that through our collaboration with StPC, this has strengthened our work in terms of women in leadership and collaborating with our Coalition partners. While they are implementing on the ground, they also have to make sure their programming is accessible by women with disabilities in their communities” adding that supporting the leadership of women with disabilities means ensuring the availability of accessible information and communication on all issues especially the climate change agenda.

In Vanuatu, collaboration amongst the three national Coalition partners has seen ni-Vanuatu women undertake outreach to young women who had lost their jobs and livelihoods as a result of COVID-19 and also ensure targeted response to women with disabilities who were overlooked by generic approaches to women or people with disabilities:

“Vanuatu has been independent for 40 years. Now, we are supporting independence for the women we have worked with for the TC Harold response in the north islands. We’re helping women to claim their rights and have a seat at the table. We’re helping women to have a voice among many large international actors. This gives them that hope that wasn’t there before,”  says Flora Vano the Country Programme Manager of ActionAid Vanuatu, “And as ActionAid we were able to support women to have a voice in the disaster response. For the first time, women from Malo visited the Provincial Office and had a chance to raise their priorities. Through our actions, we are supporting women to claim their rights and have a voice at the table; and ensuring no one gets left behind.  Working as a Coalition helps us to have a stronger voice amidst many large international actors”

“Information is Power” says Vano

Access to information for women in rural and island communities has been the work of ActionAid in Vanuatu through the establishment of the Women I Tok Tok Tugetha network which brings together more than 4000 women across the islands via AAV’s use of information, communications and technology through the Woman Wetem Weta platform adapted from FemLINKpacific’s Woman’s Weather Watch model: “Through this network, we were able to reach our communities in the south with early warning preparedness messages – almost 120,000+ people across provinces of Vanuatu. The message is interpreted in a way that local women can know how to respond and prepare their households. Women have done this over many years, they just need someone to let them know in the language that they’re used to. To ensure they have water, food and secure their houses. Women manage the households, therefore they make sure their families are safe.”

The WWW network she says has enabled AAV to ensure that they reach all women: “With the lessons learnt from TC Pam, this has helped to save a lot of lives. The women have come out very thankful – able to save their families and access food and water. They were able to do this because of the early warning messages sent via SMS as part of WWW”

Speaking at the Conference plenary addressing the theme of Climate Justice, Vano presented the conference with the following recommendations that are reflected in the Pacific Beijing Plus 25 report and also reflect the breadth of work we are all undertaking when it comes to climate action, she said:

“Inclusion - drawing Recommendations from the 13th Triennial Women’s Conference - women's networks - rural, young, women with disabilities etc must be resourced and supported. We must be supported to collect, analyse and use data disaggregated by sex, age and disability. This will assist us as we engage in enhancing gender analysis on the impact of climate change, disaster preparedness, response and recovery particularly as we work intersectionally and cross-sectorally”

“Accessible Information - Communication Technology: The 13th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women did not identify specific recommendations on women and media but without accessible information we will all be left behind. We are particularly concerned that women with disabilities are the most marginalised when it comes to access to information.  Our governments must recognise women-led innovation especially at the grassroots level and ensure that national ICT policies and action plans including those related to climate services and weather information are working with us on what content and what platforms work for us”

The example of Woman Wetem Weta is now being adapted by Shifting the Power Coalition focal points in Port Moresby and Bougainville says Helena Seneka of the YWCA of Papua New Guinea: “We are now embarking on the exciting launch of our hubs in Port Moresby and Bougainville – which will enable coordination of information from the YWCA and Nazareth Centre for Rehabilitation to support greater inclusion of women and support women’s leadership in the PNG COVID response plan”

In response to the increase in COVID cases in Fiji, the disability sector has activated the COVID-19 disability emergency committee and emergency coordination centre explained Tuimabu to use ICTs to bring attention to issues that are affecting persons with disabilities to ensure frontline workers understand the diverse experiences of the disability community:

“When we talk about mainstreaming disability inclusion into emergency response, in the past during any disasters we have been activating the disability emergency response operation. This is to communicate with persons with disability (PWD) and share information that is accessible on preparedness during disaster, and also feed information into the emergency operations centre”

The Coalition’s collaborative approach is also creating a dedicated space for young women says Seneka:

“Through the Young Women and Climate Change project local young women leaders are connecting with and learning from the experiences of young women from other pacific island nations. We are appreciating the benefits of accessible ICT technology to respond to crisis through collaboration with disaster management officials, and ensuring protection with dignity in our communities.”

“Diverse young women have the solutions that work for them” says Carolyn Kitione the Shifting the Power Coalition Regional Young Woman Focal Point: “With combined experience of members of the StPC, we’re able to provide that cross-learning. We’re able to understand what’s worked and what hasn’t worked. Empower the coalition partners to understand where we’ve come from, where we go next, and how we go about that journey”

In a region that is commonly portrayed in tourism postcards that gloss over human security reports on the impact of rising sea levels and intensifying local and national disasters. The Blue Pacific Continent is a region where these risks mean the loss of livelihoods, threats to cultural identity, and harm to the dignity of communities. Today the Shifting the Power Coalition brings together a network of close to 100,000 grassroots, intergenerational and inclusive movements in 7 Pacific Island Forum countries.

The event has identified the following recommendations for the conference:

• Upscale and resource collaborations and partnerships via innovative and flexible models that enable diverse women including women with disabilities and young women to provide leadership in responding to climate change and intersecting crisis, ensuring disability inclusion and the participation of diverse young women is integrated from the design to implementation stages.


• Recognize, reaffirm and resource greater south-south collaboration and learning across the Pacific local women’s networks and group that enable locally-led innovation and initiatives; resource the scaling up of women-led information and communication systems in all stages of disaster management and climate action, and ensuring information and communication systems are accountable, accessible and appropriate to women in disabilities


• Development partners should resource and work through feminist and inclusive models of partnership and collaboration to avoid replication of patriarchal systems of practice by investing in feminist coalitions and networks that drive gender transformative change and integrate diverse local women’s leadership, knowledge, and innovation