“The cost of justice in Fiji, whether to defend a case or to initiate it costs around about...$50 Fijian which is a weekly per capita adult income for a woman living on a basic needs poverty line,” said Nalini Singh, Executive Director of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM).
Singh shared this as a panelist on the webinar ‘Social Protection and Violence against Women and Girls in the Indo Pacific: Responding to COVID-19’*.
She said that on average, 2 in 3 women find difficulty in reaching out to the formal justice system “because of issues around sensitivity of how violence is perceived.”
The statistics are from FWRM’s 2017 research, ‘Balancing the Scales: Improving Fijian women's access to justice’ which looks at how rising cases of violence against women impacts their access to justice and how it correlates with existing social protection schemes.
Singh said Fiji was putting together a prevention plan for ending violence against women and girls; during the COVID-19 restrictions in Fiji, calls to the national helpline had spiked.
“We have women who are locked in with perpetrators of violence [and] we know that they are more vulnerable and so you know there are more cases being reported now,” she explained.
However, although there are existing social protection schemes (Food Vouchers for Rural Pregnant Mothers; Poverty Benefit Scheme; Social Pension Scheme), there was no coordinated response “in terms of social prediction, emergency schemes or cash transfers etc.”
“What we have seen is that there have been reduction in a number of social production schemes and this is in regards to provision of meals in schools, free transport in their amounts being reduced etc,” Singh said.
Singh said the schemes need to be integrated in a way “that there’s a potential to contribute not just to alleviating poverty but it looks at a whole range of aspects which includes addressing those that are facing violence and would need some extra support...given the barriers that they are facing in terms of accessing justice.”
She also said there needs to be a review of the social protection schemes in place and that these must be “developed in an integrated sustainable way that is tailor-made to respond to the needs and vulnerabilities of women in reference to the multi-dimensional nature of poverty that we face and its intersection with violence.”
“Gender responsiveness must be included in all budgeting and planning processes so their social protections work to create gender equality.”
*The webinar is the 27th in a series of conversations on ‘Social Protection Responses to COVID-19’.
The series is a joint effort initiated by IPCIG, the GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development BNZ and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in collaboration with Social Protection.Org platform and in cooperation with partners from different organisations.
This discussion was co-hosted by DFAT’s Education, Social Protection and Human Development Finance branch and of course the Gender Equality branch and the Pacific Operations and Development branch.
The full webinar can be viewed here.