UN Women Pacific Sub-Region Programmes
UN Women, in partnership with Pacific Islands Governments, CSOs, donors and UN agencies, focuses on delivering within four interlinked programme areas.
Programme Area 1: Advancing Gender Justice in the Pacific Programme (AGJP)
UN Women works in partnership with governments, civil society and international organisations to promote women’s human rights and political participation in the Pacific. The Advancing Gender Justice in the Pacific Programme (AGJP) has been designed based on nationally identified priorities that acknowledge and highlight the complexity in changing social norms, values and cultural practices around human rights, access to justice and women’s political participation. The programme builds on UN Women’s global and regional comparative advantage in promoting gender responsive governance.
AGJP is based on an understanding of gender responsive governance as the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels that acknowledges that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities are respected and will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender responsive governance creates equal opportunities for women and men to contribute and benefit from economic, social, cultural and political leadership.
The programme has a regional approach but interventions will continue to be adapted based on indicated country specific priorities. Eleven Pacific Island Countries have been identified for programme implementation: Solomon Islands, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) Palau, Cook Islands, Tuvalu and the Kingdom of Tonga.
The programme has two major components:
- The Pacific Women’s Access to Justice and Human Rights Initiative (Women’s Rights Initiative) to promote harmonised human rights reporting as well as de-jure and de-facto implementation of CEDAW.
- The Gender Responsive Political Governance Initiative to promote women’s political participation and representation and gender responsiveness of state structures, systems and processes. (It is the next phase of UN Women programming on gender equality in political governance. Over the past 4 years UN Women through the Gender Equality in Political Governance (GEPG) project, sought to raise awareness on gender equality and electoral system and highlighted how appropriate measures could be used to address gender bias).”
Programme Area 2. Ending Violence against Women (EVAW)
The programme provides support and assistance to reduce the level of violence against women in the Pacific. It advocates for a holistic and comprehensive approach to address Gender-Based Violence by focusing on:
- Prevention of violence against women (including men and boys);
- Legislative change to address violence against women;
- Implementation of EVAW policies and legislation (such as the Family Protection Bill);
- Addressing basic services for survivors of violence (access to health care, counseling, shelter);
- Supporting the development of specific policies, plans and protocols within and among service sectors to effectively deliver services.
In addition, the programme continues providing funds for innovative initiatives by Government and CSOs through the Pacific Regional Ending Violence Against Women Facility Fund. The Facility Fund supports actions and projects that include but are not limited to the following initiates:
- Contribute to the prevention of violence against women;
- Contribute to the development of local, national and regional commitments to ending violence against women;
- Increase women’s access to justice; and
- Increase women’s access to support services.
The Facility Fund also offers capacity building initiatives for the grantees to strengthen their project development and management skills.
Programme Area 3. Improving Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE)
Women’s economic empowerment is essential to the development of Pacific Island Countries (PICs). The programme will provide support to the Governments to engage in legislative change (and implementation) to improve women’s work environment in the private and public sector. In addition, the programme aims to support the most marginalized women in the informal economy sector. Under the Markets for Change component of the Programme, UN Women will advocate, build and strengthen partnerships between local governments and organized women’s market vendors to improve market facilities and related environments.
Women’s contributions to the informal economic sector and to countries’ food security are largely unacknowledged. Hence, the programme will conduct a systematic study of women’s informal economic activities, including their involvement in the care economy. The evidence and data collected will be used to make women’s economic contributions visible and to promote the expansion of social protection to cover women in the informal economic sector.
Programme Area 4. Increasing Community Resilience through the Empowerment of Women to Address Climate Change and Natural Hazards - IREACH
UN Women, in partnership with governments, CSOs, donors and other UN agencies, will be working to develop a holistic approach to integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment issues into the Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management agenda. The programme will build upon the existing partnerships with the Barefoot College from India to (i) strengthen communities’ resilience in villages where work is being already carried out by UN Women and the Barefoot College by engagement of women/communities who have received the training as advocates for gender equity in renewable energy projects; (ii) support women from new villages and other PICs to attend Barefoot College trainings; (iii) link community based Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction initiatives and lessons learnt to provincial and national policies, plans, budgets and reforms.