Pacific consultation on Violence against Women studies

Data for Action, Pacific Regional Meeting on Violence Against Women Studies,14 - 16 May 2012, Novotel Hotel, Lami

Data on violence against women (VAW) are crucial for developing VAW policies, sound programming, monitoring and evaluating global and local efforts to eliminate all forms of VAW.

It is important to realize that measuring prevalence of VAW using surveys is sensitive and often distressing with the potential to create significant risk for women participants, their families and the research field workers involved. But it is the only way to estimate the magnitude and scope of VAW in a population, information that is needed to inform policies and to evaluate interventions.

In the Pacific region to date 6 countries have measured VAW in studies that have produced comparable data using the methodology as developed for the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence: Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. At least 5 more countries will collect data in the near future using the same WHO methodology, with technical support from UNFPA and financial backing from AusAID.

A 3-day consultation, Data for action, involved knowledge exchange between representatives of countries which had already implemented the study and those who intend to. The consultation to which also other key stakeholders were invited, allowed sharing of results as well as lessons learned from field implementation and from the use of data for action.

The 55 participants at the consultation included besides representatives of the countries that had already conducted VAW studies and those who were about to start VAW studies, also representatives of the following key stakeholders: AusAID, Delegation of the European Union, Fiji Ministry of Health, Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific, Pacific Forum Secretariat, Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Auckland University of Technology, University of Auckland and the University of the South Pacific, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNFPA, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and UN Women.

Please click on links below to view the agenda and to download presentations and the report of the consultation.