PACER-Plus is a new trade agreement being negotiated between Australia and 13 Pacific island countries, which has the potential to put ‘wealth before health’.
Come to this seminar to learn more
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Join IWDA, UNIFEM and the Gender and Peace Commission of IPRA on 8 July to hear stories from women peace activists that are working to ensure women’s voices are heard and their needs met in peace building and conflict resolution processes in the region. Free entry! Drinks and refreshments served.

Three steps forward, two steps back – but still walking onwards

IWDA supports the face of courage: Kup Women for Peace
Pacific Programs Manager (PNG), Eleanor Jackson writes about the Kup Women for Peace and their work.

“The Papua New Guinea of today is a country of great change and promise. Yet, as PNG’s Big Men make deals on their Blackberrys, and yesterday’s copra plantation workers train to be tomorrow’s heavy machine operators, the vast majority of Papua New Guinean women still find themselves not only responsible for primary food production, the provision of water and fuel, and the delivery of child and familial care, but also subject to widespread physical, sexual and emotional violence.

Against this backdrop, Mary Kini, Agnes Sil and Angela Apa of Kup Women for Peace (KWP) stand as passionate activists and development workers in PNG committed to bringing safety and security to their communities…”

I’ve just returned from three weeks travelling among our Pacific partners, three weeks filled with vivid and powerful stories and meeting inspirational women. I’ve been writing an online journal on
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Solidarity is Powerful

I am in Suva in Fiji, spending time with a dozen women from informal settlements and squatter communities who are part of the feminist community organization, Women’s Action for Change (WAC).

Over the past four years, over 250 women have been quietly building a sustainable network of women community organisers in 15 informal settlements in Fiji. They are actively making decisions on the training they require, collectively evaluating the program, doing fundraising and micro-enterprise work, and increasingly taking up decision-making positions within their own family groups, communities and networks, and at WAC.

The elephant in the room

IWDA ED Jane Sloane is currently visiting some of IWDA’s partners in the Pacific.

This update comes from Papua New Guinea where Jane spent time with some of our program partners in East New Britain.
In many communities where church and religion are strong, it’s hard to have a conversation about safe sex, male and female condoms, or reproductive health choices for women. It’s like the elephant in the room. And yet these conversations are critical, and sometimes will mean the difference between life and death or quality of life for an individual and her family.

I’m spending time with staff from the East New Britain Sexual Health Improvement Project, where IWDA is a project partner, along with the Burnett Institute and Cairns Sexual Health Services, working to reduce the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Local staff are creating safe and accessible ways for people to get information and seek treatment and IWDA’s role is to support a gender-sensitive community-based approach that empowers women and men to make informed sexual and reproductive health decisions.

Claire Rowland on making space for women, gender and Pacific perspectives in the PACER Plus negotiations

The absence of women from decision making in various arenas is a recurring theme on this website. Another ‘where are the women’ example that is concerning IWDA at the moment is the negotiation of new trade arrangements in the Pacific, known as PACER Plus

Joining IWDA’s Executive Director at the recent conference on Pacific women, held in Vanuatu was Claire Rowland, one of IWDA’s intrepid Pacific Program Managers. Here she offers her perspective…

No woman, no pride – Jane Sloane

IWDA ED Jane Sloane is currently visiting some of IWDA’s partners in the Pacific.

This update comes from Rabaul in Papua New Guinea where Jane spent time with some of our program partners.

“I’m in Rabaul in Papua New Guinea to spend time with some of our program partners in East New Britain and I’m reminded again of how we in Australia are so used to accessing everything instantly and also how challenged I feel without ready access to water. How precious it is.”