16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence: Day Seven

Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding

Koila Costello-Olsson, Director of Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding (PCP) talks about the organisation’s work and the 16 Days campaign:

Can you tell us a little about your organisation’s work?

Our work is in the area of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. We work with  different sections of the communities in Fiji and the Pacific providing training, facilitation or counselling for individuals or groups. Our approach is gender sensitive, respectful of human rights, and we embrace the principles of non violence and restorative justice. The approaches we use also work at finding a balance between evolving and traditional processes of handling conflict and building a positive peace.

How does your organisation’s work impact women’s lives?

Our work involves encouraging men and women to understand deeply conflict situations by doing conflict analysis, and looking at ways that one can help to better improve the way that they are dealing with the conflict. There is also an emphasis on the effects that conflicts can have on people who are directly and indirectly involved in the conflict and this may lead to trauma. Awareness raising is also provided on stress and trauma and ways to better handle it.

The programme that deals with military families and peacekeepers is geared towards raising awareness and re-learning better ways to handle stress and trauma. There is recognition that if stress is managed well and better communication skills are used, and proper support is given, relationships in families and the communities will improve and there will be better decisions made that involve women and children in a respectful and holistic way.

How will these program outcomes contribute to ending violence against women?

We believe that if there is analysis and reflection on situations of conflict and violence, there is also an opportunity to make decisions and re-examine better ways to deal with issues of conflict, then there will be changes in behaviour and attitude. Through awareness raising programmes, group processes and counselling the messages are shared constantly.

As we have access to individuals who are both victims and offenders in the cycle of violence, and our approach uses the principles of restorative justice, our audience has received this information well. We also have had access to more males than females, and we are able to share these messages with them.

What is your organisation doing for the 16 days of Activism (if applicable)?

Our PCP North Office will be participating in some activities with the Ministry of Women and some other civil society organisations in Labasa.

In Suva, we will continue to do our work in this area and will attend other events hosted by civil society. We will also be working with the Fiji police and members of the security forces to facilitate a workshop on handling change management in the Command Centre from December 1st-3rd, 2009.

More specifically, Paolo Bale, our programme manager will be attending a two week training with IFOR in the Netherlands to become a male trainer in non-violence.

What needs to be done to end Violence Against Women in your region?

There needs to be more programmes to work with families on anger management, communication skills and handling conflict in non violent ways.

More specifically there needs to be more programmes that work with violent men to assist them in working through their violent behaviours.

More work needs to be done to examine  ways that structural violence contributes to violence against women and children  and what structures need to be changed to improve their lives.

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16 Days of Activism is a global campaign encouraging organisations and individuals across the world to take a stand against gender-based violence.
The campaign starts on 25th November: The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and ends on 10th December: World Human Rights Day.

16 Days of Activism was started by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership 18 years ago. The campaign’s beginning and end dates highlight that violence against women is a human rights violation.

Thousands of diverse groups and individuals now take part in 16 Days, together calling for an end to all types of violence against women. Each year people organise events in their communities, including meetings, conferences, demonstrations, exhibitions and performances.

This year at IWDA, we have decided to use the 16 Days to highlight the work our partners in Asia and the Pacific are doing to improve the situation for women and girls in their communities, as well as the work IWDA is undertaking in Australia. Each day between 25th November and 10th December, we will post a short article about 16 Days our website, Facebook page, and Twitter page.

Tags: 16 Days of Activism, peace building

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 under 16_Days.