Pacific NGOs highlight region's issues to the world
Updated
The Pacific Islands' Network of NGOs has used this week's United Nation's conference in Melbourne on advancing global health to try to explain the problems and issues which countries face around the region. While PIANGO says it does not want to stop businesses or tourists from coming to their countries, they want them to know that the social, economic, and environmental issues which make news in the developed world, are also issues in the Pacific.
Presenter: Campbell Cooney, Pacific Correspondent
Speakers: Ofa Guttenbeil Likiliki, from the Tongan Women and Children's Crisis Centre; Jennifer Wate, Director of the Solomon Islands Development Trust; Annie Homasi, Director of Tuvalu Association of NGOs; Irene Malachai, Vanuatu's IZA Foundation Coordinator
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EMILY: I am Emele Duituturaga; I'm the Executive Director of an organisation that's called PIANGO, The Pacific Islands Association of Non-Government Organisations.
COONEY: The United Nations NGO conference in Melbourne gave Pacific civil society and advocacy groups the opportunity to explain to many of those people from outside the region what issues communities are facing. During it a workshop titled "Achieving Millennium Development Goals in Grassroots Pacific Communities", the representatives of four NGOs all part of PIANGO from different Pacific Island nations, addressed a packed audience, and gave details about the issues they deal with in their society, but also in many cases are being dealt with by all Pacific nations. And as Mrs Duituturaga explained, while many may see the Pacific as nothing more than a holiday destination, the nations which are in the Pacific do face major issues.
DUITUTURAGA: Beneath paradise women get beaten up, children get abused, we have no water, we have no sanitation.
COONEY: The first to address the audience was Annie Homasi, the Executive Director of TANGO, the Tuvalu Association of NGOs. Tuvalu is one of the first nations in the world to face the effect of climate change, and as Ms Homasi explained, that makes it the major focus of that country's NGOs.
HOMASI: We have severe hurricanes, severe droughts, loss of biodiversity and then lost of our livelihood. We are very concerned as a civil society in Tuvalu.
COONEY: Jennifer Wate is the Director of the Solomon Islands Development Trust. A different country means different priorities. In Solomon Islands, health is the major focus of the SIDT.
WATE: Our vision is that every Solomon Islander is healthy, happy and self-reliant and our mission is to improve the quality of village living. In terms of leadership we've been advocating in making sure than our leaders are held accountable to the actions that they're doing.
COONEY: For the Pacific HIV AIDS treatment, awareness and prevention is growing as a priority. In Vanuatu the IZA Foundation is the NGO which is leading that effort, and its founder is Irene Malachai.
MALACHAI: Irene Malachai, the first confirmed case in Vanuatu of HIV and AIDS declared by our government. IZA Foundation is a foundation that I founded and I stands for Irene myself, and ZA for Zara, that is my daughter who is infected through me, so she's positive too, and now she's ten years old now. And our core … is to prevent and minimise the spread of HIV infection among the population, and to reduce the stigmas manifest by people living with and affected by HIV in Vanuatu. IZA's increased knowledge of HIV infection among the communities. For example no signs of public discrimination in the last three years through personal observation. For example before when I was declared there were a lot of discriminations and stigma throughout all the nation of Vanuatu, and it has affected me and my kids who were all rejected by the communities. My kids have been discriminated at school, and we couldn't go to the shop, had to buy from the shop and run away. We couldn't get a bus, even taxis, and even people spit on us. After I came out public and started doing all this advocacy it all changed. I've broken a lot of cultural, social and religious barriers.
COONEY: The final talker was Ofa Guttenbeil from the Tongan Women and Children's Crisis Centre.
GUTTENBEIL: What we have found is that there is a huge increase in children under five who are experiencing malnutrition. Also with the women and children, particularly with women who are victims and survivors of domestic violence and the arguments that they go on in the home, with the last ten pa'anga, which is approximately five US dollars, is spent on the husband going kava drinking, or will it be spent on buying a kilo of chicken to feed the family? So we see many of these incidents through our cases. In our census report we report that the literacy rate is quite high for women and children in Tonga, sorry for women and men in Tonga, over 90 per cent, but what we have found through our cases, our clients who access our services, is that many of these young girls who are children of survivors and victims, who have remained at home for the first five years of basic education are illiterate. We had an incest case that we dealt with recently and the first time this young girl was raped was when she was in class six. Because she was raped the family felt that there was no need for her to return to school. Thereafter she experienced years of incest and child abuse, and when she came to us at the age of 19 she didn't know her alphabet. Numerous cases we deal with. We have women who we deal with their cases remain open for three-four years, and they have eight children, and they're constantly telling us that their body is tired, they can't handle the pregnancies anymore, there's too many children to feed, and yet the barriers and the obstacles that they face. For example in our hospitals for tubal ligation you have to get permission of your husband. So if the husband says no, we have a lot of attitudes and behaviours to change the thinking and the myths around rape in Tonga.
