07 April 2015

Suva Fiji

The Fiji Women's Forum will be staging another national consultation on Women’s Participation in National Democratic Processes from April 8 – 10^th at the Holiday Inn in Suva.

This is the fifth consultation organised since the National Council of Women Fiji, the Soqosoqo Vakamarama I Taukei, the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement and FemLINKPACIFIC first convened the Fiji Women’s Forum in April 2012. They will once again be bringing together 50 diverse women leaders from across Fiji.

According to the General Secretary of the National Council of Women Fiji, Fay Volatabu one of the values of the Forum is its diversity as well as the investment in inter-generational dialogue and working for the long term development of women and gender equality:

“The Fiji Women’s Forum is co-convened by four very dynamic and diverse women and the fact they are going on to their 5^th forum which is a legacy for the women’s organisation. (it brings together women from) very diverse social, economic backgrounds to sit together in a room and discuss issues. So it’s been a great experience for us. It has also helped us to move forward in our need for intergenerational leadership.”

Since 2012 the Fiji Women’s Forum has undertaken a series of local and national activities including increased collaboration across the membership and networks of the co-convenors which according to Adi Finau Tabakaucoro the General Secretary of the Soqosoqo Vakamarama I Taukei contributed to a consolidation of a series of activities in the lead up to the September 2014 national elections including preparing women for the elections and, aiming to get, increased representation:

“The result of that liaison and coalition was a very vigorous civic education process that were undertaken by the four co-convenors and their membership. That civic education was mainly to promote rights for women in terms of gender equality and increase women’s representation in parliament.”

This time the focus in on Local Governance.

According to Volatabu, this has been a priority issue for the co-convenors and it is time to develop collective strategies:

“That’s why we really want the local government elections to go ahead. And of course just like the national election we want 50% or more representation of women (but) whether the local government elections happens this year or next or whenever it happens, we are already preparing our women. So we’ve started doing our training with women leaders. Women leaders in the Vanua or women who are wanting to go into council elections.”

While the membership of the Soqosoqo Vakamarama I Taukei primarily focuses on traditional governance structures the other structures the National Parliament, municipality and rural local authorities as well as iTaukei institutions are all relevant particularly to increase women’s participation in all existing structures:

“So we’ll definitely be discussing those matters and we’ll probably have to be looking back and uh assessing how we’ve performed in those four parallel agencies, and how we might advance from our past positions in terms of getting more women to participate.”

The Fiji Women’s Forum was also catalytic in the formation of the Fiji Young Women’s Forum and young women’s participation in reflected in forum convenor’ s representation as well as the participation of representatives of the Young Women’s Forum.

View the Final Outcomes Document here

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