Violence against women and ICTs in the Pacific Islands region: An overview

This article is based on an interview with Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, the coordinator of FemLINK Pacific, a regional NGO that deals with women and the media, with a specific focus on the role of women in peace-building and conflict resolution.

The Pacific Islands regions consists of 22 countries and territories1, some of which, such as the islands of French Polynesia, are still colonial possessions and lacking independent legislative and administrative mechanisms. Of these 22, seven countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, and a further three countries/ territories have ratified it in conjunction with New Zealand (as they were or are still New Zealand territories). These ten are the Cook Islands, Fiji, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokolau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. In September 2009, the Tongan Parliament voted overwhelmingly not to ratify CEDAW, with only one vote against the decision. A press statement by the Prime Minister's Office says, “The Legislative Assembly believed that to ratify CEDAW would cut across our cultural and social heritage that makes up the Tongan way of life. It would require the creation of fundamental changes for every Tongan citizen to a way of life and social organisation that has sustained Tonga to date.” While claiming that this does not mean that the Tongan governmentⁱ lacks respect for women's rightsⁱ, one of the concerns was that it would mean that women removing restrictions on women inheriting land2.

Myriad issues in the Pacific Islands, including both VAW and ICT development, are affected by the ongoing issue of colonisation in the region and by the geography of the region. In terms of colonisation, part of the region are claimed by the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Indonesia, among others. In some cases, such as the US involvement of Guam and Indonesia's claim over West Papua, this involvement includes a heavy military prescence, which has knock-on effects on perceptions of violence in general and violence against women in particular3. This is also true in independent countries such as Fiji, where the civilian coup of May 2000 has had a direct impact on violence against women, according to Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, while the impact of the 2007 coup on VAW remains uncertain – though she asserts that it has led to a deprioritising of the women's rightsⁱ agenda4.

The geography of the region has had an obvious impact on ICT development. Consisting of up to 20,000 islands, with two of the world's three least populated nations being in the Pacific Islands (Nauru and Tuvalu), the challenges in providing all parts of the region with basic ICT infrastructure are immense. This is compounded by the poverty and lack of resources of many of the island nations. All these factors in turn have an impact on VAW – whether it is in the resources needed to police existing legislation or in the capacity to formulate legislation.

Both at an official level and among NGOs there is a high degree of regional cooperation. In terms of the women's movement, the Pacific Women's Network Against Violence was formed in 1992, initiated by the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre. The network consists of 23 organisations in 10 countries across the Pacific, and has been at the forefront of pushing for greater legislative protection for women against violence. However, there is a high degree of cultural tolerance for VAW, for example, when the Fiji legislative assembly was faced with the third reading of a bill on family law, initiated by the women's movement, objections included:

• Women are followers of men, the Bible says so. The Bill would upset God’s natural order by granting women equality and thereby encouraging them to leave their husbands;

• The Bill was anti-Christian and anti-Fijian;

• Only adultery was a valid ground for divorce in the Bible if at all, violence certainly was not;

• It gave children rights over their parents which was against Fijian tradition;

• It would destroy the essential nature of Fijian indigenous society;

• It was against the chiefly system because illegitimate children would have rights to be traditional chiefs5.

Legislation on VAW has come under persistent scrutiny by women's rights advocates, for being “outdated and treat(ing) women with indifference despite the globally high rates of VAW in the Pacific region”6. In a press statement from March 2009, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community Regional Rights Resources Team's gender and human rightsⁱ advisor P. Imrana Jalal commended three nations, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu, for making progress in changing laws to be more in line with women's aspirations to recognition of equality. However, of the three only Vanuatu passed legislation on domestic violence, the other two extending or improving legislation covering sexual assault.

In June 2009, the UN Expert Group on Good Practices in Legislation to Address Harmful Practices Against Women, meeting in Addis Ababa, heard about the current status of VAW legislation in the Pacific. That only Samoa had made progress on legislation on domestic violence – it is planning to pass legislation – indicates that although the women's movement has suceeded in getting governments to recognise the importance of VAW, there is a need to see stronger commitments across the region7.

In this context, there has been little done to address the issue of how ICTs either contribute to VAW or how they can help to provide new spaces to empower women. One of the few initiatives that Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls highlighted in an interview was that of the suitcase radio, a mobile community radio run by FemLINKPACIFIC. This initiative has been successful in empowering women, both in giving them access to the airwaves and in providing information on a range of issues that impact on women. However, the lack of a regulatory framework for community radio in any of the Pacific Island nations means that there are no guarantees that the model and lessons learned from this experience will be repeated elsewhere. Ms Bhagwan-Rolls says that this problem of applying appropriate technology is just one of the challenges faced by the few people doing work on VAW and ICTs in the Pacific.

SR: How have new communications technologies impacted negatively on VAW - have there been new types of VAW (such as online stalking and harassment), or new ways of monitoring women living with violence? SBR: I am beginning to hear more and more about the use of mobile phone technology being used, for example, to document women and girls in situations. These images are not used to raise alerts but actually to “share the images” as a joke. This phenomena needs more investigation, as it is uncertain how widespread it is. In June this year, the Cook Islands News reported the circulation of images of the alleged rape of a young woman, who was only 12 years old. SR: How has the women's movement in the region reacted to these changes, if any? SBR: I have not noticed much in the way of women addressing the linkage between violence and ICT – maybe because the roll-out to this technology is slower than it is in the Asian region, but I think the examples we have heard about the issues as experienced by sisters in Asia need to serve as an early warning. SR: Has the women's movement been active in the policy process on the use and regulationⁱ of ICTs? Could you give some details? SBR: FemLINKPACIFIC is one of the few women’s NGOs addressing ICT policyⁱ – very few have involved themselves either pre- or post-WSIS. At FemLINKPACIFIC, we have focussed mostly on community radio and broadcasting legislation, rather than the internetⁱ or mobile phone policy. However, that is because the government process does not involve women at all …and we have to keep knocking on their door rather than them even considering the impact. There is a need to take this up at the regional level, as there is a Pacific Digital Strategy in place and there is a need to consider the impact of ICT content both from a cultural perspective and also with social and gender analysisⁱ. SR: How has the women's movement used ICTs to help combat VAW? SBR: Not too sure from the perspective of addressing domestic violence but there is also the need to consider violence in its broadest form eg in Fiji – sending messages of solidarity and other information. An issue is cost for the women, as many of them do not have the available funds to afford the luxury and there is no free service. SR: What are the pitfalls in the women's movement's use of ICTs (eg is there a problem of appropriate technology, use of resources etc)? SBR: Very much the issue of appropriate technology and also access to resources. Women have to be seen as more than passive users of the technology