Safety and wellbeing in Australia’s Pacific labour mobility scheme

Australian industries have used labour from the Pacific Islands in different forms since the late 1800s. The Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme was announced in 2021 and combined two previous schemes, the Seasonal Worker Program and the Pacific Labour Scheme. The PALM scheme allows eligible Australian businesses to hire workers from nine Pacific Island […]

Nauru Country Plan Summary

Through Pacific Women, the Australian Government has allocated $5.1 million over 10 years (2012–2022) to initiatives supporting women’s empowerment in Nauru.

Country Plans are the mechanism through which Pacific Women outcomes and activities are planned and agreed between DFAT and counterpart governments, following extensive national consultations. They provide detail on what will be funded and how these funding decisions are made. The first Nauru Country Plan was developed during a design mission that coincided with missions by the Pacific Community and the Asian Development Bank in March 2014. Consultations were held with the Government of Nauru, civil society, district level leaders, local businesses and faith-based organisations.

A mid-term review of the Nauru Country Plan took place in 2017. The findings from the review noted that there has been an improvement in outcomes, due largely to changes in policy, legislation, referral and supportive systems. The review also identified gaps which have been addressed in the revised Country Plan.

The second Nauru Country Plan (2018–2022) was developed during an aligned mission with UN Women and was finalised in 2018. Australia’s Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Senator the Hon Anne Ruston and Nauru’s Minister for Education, Health, Home Affairs and Land Management, the Hon Charmaine Scotty jointly launched the Second Nauru Country Plan on 5 September 2018.

Activities under the second Country Plan include engaging a Psychosocial Counsellor through the Pacific Women Support Unit to handle cases of domestic violence and prevention. The Country Plan also supports activities to strengthen the role of the health sector in identifying and supporting victims of violence and gender mainstreaming support for DFAT’s programs in Nauru.

In addition to Pacific Women, DFAT makes an important contribution to gender equality in Nauru through mainstreaming gender outcomes in the aid program, as well as through political, diplomatic and corporate activities.

Nauru Family Health and Support Study: An exploratory study on violence against women

The Nauru Family Health and Support Study aimed at obtaining reliable information on violence against women (VAW), its characteristics, and consequences. Although the study initially sought to collect a nationally representative sample of women aged 15-64, due to a low response rate, its findings are derived from a reduced sample of eligible women in a […]

How do Pacific Island countries add up on contraception, abortion and reproductive coercion? Guidance from the Guttmacher report on investing in sexual and reproductive health

The Guttmacher-Lancet Commission report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) called for the acceleration of progress to achieve SRHR that is essential for sustainable development. To integrate the essential services defined in this report into universal health coverage in the 11 sovereign nations in the Pacific, quality data is required to ensure needs […]

WHO Western Pacific Region Fact Sheet: Violence Against Women Prevalence Estimates 2018

This World Health Organisation Fact Sheet provides data estimates on prevalence of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. Data is provided for Pacific Island countries including Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Leadership Matters: Benchmarking Women’s Business Leadership in the Pacific

With the world’s lowest representation of women in parliament, women’s opportunities to participate in leadership and decision-making in the Pacific are often considered limited. A new study by the Asian Development Bank’s Pacific Private Sector Development Initiative finds that, increasingly, Pacific women are being afforded leadership opportunities in the private sector. Women’s representation as company […]

Political Economy Analysis in Supporting Women’s Electoral Candidacy: Lessons from Nauru

With elections expected in Samoa and Tonga in 2021, and Papua New Guinea in 2022, development partners will have already turned their attention to women’s inclusion in those electoral processes as a means by which to reach international democratic standards. Political economy analysis (PEA) — an evidence-based assessment of the political dynamics between structures, institutions […]

Gender, culture and the Pacific

The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of how culture in the Pacific impacts gender equality and human development. The analysis addresses two views that are widely held in the Pacific: 1) that gender is biologically determined, and 2) that culture is a sacred template should not be meddled with. Both these notions have attracted […]

The audacity of the ocean: Gendered politics of positionality in the Pacific

Throughout the contemporary Pacific, relationships that indigeneity makes possible are emerging as celebrated resistance to post-colonial development anxieties. In the process, lived experience heightens the commitment to decolonize thinking, language and practice in teaching and research. Not only because these imperatives are highly personalized but also because they are gendered and heavy with generational trauma. […]