TAKE FIVE - Loukinikini Vili
Date:
Author: Jacqui Berrell
Loukinikini Vili is the Director of Human Rights at Samoa's Office of the Ombudsman and also the National Human Rights Institution, which has led the nation's first National Inquiry into Family Violence with support from UN Women Multi-Country Office (MCO) in Fiji. For possibly the first time, the Inquiry has brought into the national conversation the issue of family violence which "many see as a cultural norm" even though such acts of violence are denounced in the Samoan culture. Loukinikini believes that "rather than continuing to be reactive, Samoa through this Inquiry is being more proactive with regard to the problem of family violence."
1) Why is the National Inquiry into Family Violence in Samoa important?
The National Inquiry is the first of its kind in Samoa. For the Office of the Ombudsman to do its first inquiry on Family Violence was a big and very important decision.
It was clear from the findings of the first State of Human Rights Report 2015 (SHRR 2015), supported by the Office of the Ombudsman and the Samoa National Human Rights Institute, that many see family violence as a cultural norm. If the Inquiry's findings confirm this, it will want to know why and how this has become the situation in Samoa and it would want to make recommendations to address this belief.
I believe the Inquiry will foster a national conversation on family violence, to reveal the full dimensions of our family violence problem. Understanding the true scale, nature and the attitudes we espouse on family violence should better enable us to decide as a community how best to bring about a different Samoa with regard to family violence. The ultimate solutions will need to be formulated with communal understanding and consensus but the fundamental GOAL before us is: To do what is best for the women, young girls and children of Samoa who are suffering in growing numbers from family violence.
The Inquiry we hope will expose existing under-utilized capacities and opportunities in village governance mechanisms and other social institutions that can profitably be called upon to combat family violence and/or to educate against it.
A further key area for potential findings is the effectiveness of the services and support available to survivors and victims of family violence. The under-reporting of family violence could be a significant issue with the Inquiry possibly wanting to look into causes and barriers that exist.
2) What challenges is this kind of historic inquiry expected to face?
Family Violence is a serious issue in Samoa.
This is evident from reports we see on TV and the newspapers; we see also the many projects and programs by the Government, the Courts, NGOs and the community to address violence. We see the expanding operations of organisations such as the Samoa Victims Support Group. These measures are valuable components of a national effort to cope with the problem, but they struggle to keep up with a problem that continues to grow.
In 2014-2015, the Office carried out the first ever comprehensive review of human rights in Samoa. One of the areas highlighted in the report was violence against women, girls and children. Data collected by the Office for the purposes of the SHRR 2015 showed that a total of 39% of participants surveyed in 2014-2015 reported seeing abuse against women and girls in their village in the previous year. Over one-third (34%) of Survey participants witnessed domestic abuse against a child in the past year within the family or village. Disturbingly, although not asked directly, a number of School Survey 2014-2015 participants indicated that sexual abuse and incest are taking place. This was corroborated by the Ministry of Police and Court records indicating a relatively high number of offences of incest and sexual offences affecting children. The SHRR 2015 also confirmed data collected by the Samoa Family Health and Safety Study in 2007 indicating that almost half of women surveyed (46.6%) aged 15-49 reported experiencing physical and/or emotional and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner.
It is therefore clear that domestic violence is widespread with sometimes extremely serious consequences for life and limb. Other incidents are under-reported for obvious reasons. The true scale of human rights violations and crimes in the form of domestic violence are never truly known in any country including Samoa.
Although these acts of violence are denounced in the Samoan culture (especially sexual abuse and incest are forbidden within Samoan laws and culture), this is an issue that persists and the Office is concerned that it is becoming increasingly common.
Rather than continuing to be reactive, Samoa through this Inquiry is being more proactive with regard to the problem. It is looking at family violence in the Samoan context with a view to opening up the issue and to understanding the problem ourselves for the shameful thing that it is, and laying out strategies and counter-measures that make sense to us and which are workable in Samoa.
3) What good can be done with the recommendations and information gained from this kind of inquiry?
The next step now is the writing of the report based on all the evidence collected by the Commission during the Inquiry. This includes evidence which was heard through public and private hearings, data and statistics collected from research, information collected from consultations with stakeholders- Government Ministries/SOEs, NGOs/CSOs, developing partners and media.
The report will make findings and practical recommendations from all these evidence and will be submitted to Parliament for deliberation and subsequently addressing the recommendations.
It is our hope that through this report, EVERYONE is accountable to addressing violence within our homes. Practically we won't be able to solve the problem the day after the report is released or within a year. But we do envision that EVERYONE should contribute to addressing the problem with doing what it needs to do to rid itself as much as possible of violence in the homes and to ensure that the needs of survivors and victims of family violence are better met through the assistance and help of EVERYONE.
4) What is the importance of ensuring the involvement of many partners to contribute to EVAWG activities such as the Inquiry?
When planning this Inquiry, supported by UN Women, it was important that we involved everyone right from the beginning - relevant Government Ministries, State Owned Enterprises, NGOs/CSOs, Developing Partners (such as UNWomen, DFAT, NZ High Commission, Commonwealth Secretariat, Asia Pacific Forum on NHRIs, UNDP etc), Media, Experts (such as doctors, counsellors etc), Judiciary, Church (leaders and interested members), National Council of Churches, Village Councils, Community Bodies (such as Sui o Nuu, Sui o Tamaitai, Youth Village Reps etc) but especially survivors, victims and perpetrators of family violence. This is because we don't have a full comprehension of the issue. And so to ensure that the inquiry is successful, it was important that everyone had an input or contributed to this inquiry one way or another. This issue requires a collective input.
Everyone has different roles and responsibilities to play in this issue. We believe Samoa can forge a solution for itself in Family Violence if it approaches it as a societal problem of national concern to be solved not by the Government alone but by the Government in strong practical collaboration with traditional village councils, churches and others.
5) How important is it to provide support to survivors, as well as those who present their testimonies in public forums?
This is one important area that we had great emphasis on when preparing for the Inquiry. We knew the circumstances that survivors have been through were already delicate and to have them go through their stories (at least for most) would be hard for many reasons. And so it was important for us to ensure that we had if not the best but at least a safe and comfortable environment or setting for survivors to share their story.
We had to ensure that the "do no harm principle" was at the centre of handling testimonies of survivors both in public and private. To do this we had in place a system.
- Pre-interview: This was to:
- Go over the purpose of the inquiry and its process/procedure
- Give the Commission a background of the Survivor's story
- Assist the Commission in doing a risk assessment of the Survivor's story
- Confirm how the Survivor will share their story (what best suits their situation) - whether to share their story in public, closed or through a written submission with the option of withholding personal details.
- During:
- Support: We engaged the assistance of NGO, Faataua le Ola to make available a counsellor should it be required by any of the Survivors before, during and after the testimonies. Survivors also had the option of choosing someone they were most conformable with.
- Interview: It was important that rules were flexible when Survivors were sharing their story.
- After: It was important that confidential testimonies were done in private and closed to the public and media to ensure that the confidentiality of these testimonies and safety of survivors is a priority
We also engaged the assistance of our private phone companies (Bluesky and Digicel) to assist with providing easy access to our office for survivors and the general public who wanted to participate in the Inquiry. A free toll number was made available prior to and during the public testimonies for them to contact us.
We also sought expert assistance from our partners including the Asia Pacific Forum, the Commonwealth Secretariat, UN Women and our local partners SVSG and committed advocates such as Sina Retzlaff and Lani Young when in contact with survivors of family violence.