Latest FemLINKPacific Women, Peace and Human Security Report

Latest FemLINKPacific Women, Peace and Human Security Report

Enabling women’s access to information, services and decision making spaces is the motivation for the monthly community media network meetings, community radio programme productions, Women’s Household Income and Expenditure Surveys as well as interactive and policy level dialogue and advocacy undertaken by FemLINKPACIFIC.

In April 376 women were supported to participate in rural network meetings, radio programme productions as well as provide information as respondents to the monthly Women’s Household Income and Expenditure Survey in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Bougainville

The monthly network meetings are one of the few ways rural women who live beyond our 10 kilometre broadcast range are able to access information and participate in coalition building and strengthening of their own local level political agency.

The impact of this work is experienced in the home and the community, where through women’s stories and the reports from FemLINKPACIFIC a core group of rural women including market vendors and a number of women who are part of the growing sector of women involved in the informal economy working to make ends meet for their basic needs of their family, but at the same time still bearing the burden of unpaid work within the home. And so 25 women were able to participate in a financial literacy workshop at our Community Media Centre in Labasa in conjunction with Westpac.

The findings are also up-streamed into community media strategies as well as recommendations for strategies to enhance women’s participation in political processes at the national and sub-national level. This was once again communicated by our rural network members who participated in the 4th Fiji Women’s Forum in April.

At the regional level, our work within the GPPAC Pacific network and with the “1325” network continues to prepare for the roll-out of the Regional Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security within regional political processes, but continuing to keep a civil-society watch on the national and local issues which require political action such as the Provincial Elections in the Solomon Islands, while also extending solidarity and support to networks in Papua New Guinea and Tonga including special reports Calling for the Resumption of Weapons Disposal Programme in Bougainville based on interviews with our regional counterpart Helen Hakena.

ENDS

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