Representatives from DAWN, DIVA for Equality (Fiji, LBT), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (Fiji), Punanga Tauturu (Cook Islands), Pacific Disabilities Forum and others were among civil society organisation (CSO) representatives from across the Pacific who were part of a 5 day meeting in Suva Fiji from 6-10 May 2013 to discuss human rights issues centred sustainable development, good governance, peace, conflict and security in the region.
CSOs networked and built stronger coalitions for a louder, substantive and diverse civil society voice in the region as well as providing concrete input into the Pacific Islands Forum Regional Security Committee processes and the Pacific Plan review.
CSOs called for immediate action to end the acts of torture and extra-judicial killings related to witchcraft and sorcery in Papua New Guinea.
They also put out an urgent action call on the effects of climate change on small island states, including ensuring that any climate-change induced migration is based on human dignity, and commensurate with the inherent human rights of the person.
Also present at the meeting were representatives from PNG Eastern Highlands Women’s CSO, ‘Voices for Change’. Leentjie Be’Soer was part of a DAWN-facilitated team to CSW57 earlier this year, where they carried out international advocacy and lobbying work on the torture and extra-judicial killing of women and girls in Papua New Guinea under the guise of eliminating witchcraft and sorcery. Lily Be’Soer of Voice for Change and other PNG women advocates are also part of the wider GEEJ Pacific, and newly forming Pacific Feminist SRHR coalition.
DAWN’s Noelene Nabulivou (Fiji) said, “Thanks largely to the long and tenacious work of PNG and Pacific feminist and women’s groups, including Voice for Change, Pacific Women’s Network against Violence against Women, and the emergent Pacific Feminist SRHR Coalition we are now finally seeing a certain degree of raised public awareness. But it is nowhere near enough. Now we have to work even harder to translate increased awareness into concrete results including specific actions by the PNG state and others, as raised in our Outcome document.”
“We also call on all development partners and UN agencies to take up strongest voice and strategic action – with local PNG and Pacific women’s groups as guides of this joint work”, she also said. CSOs at the regional meeting called for the ‘overall adoption and integration of a human rights-based approach in all national and regional development processes, and for ‘structural transformation toward for economic, social and ecological sustainability’.
The CSO Dialogue was jointly convened by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community Regional Rights Resources Team (SPC RRRT) in partnership with Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS). The diverse national and regional CSOs in the room were from Cook Islands, Fiji,
Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. They work on areas such as national disaster and relief, disability, health, education, humanitarian assistance, climate change, environment, mining and fisheries, economics, law, gender equality, SRHR, SOGI and sexual rights, young people, good governance, peace and security, and community media.
Click HERE to view the article from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) website.