Fiji has made progress on women’s rights over the past decade, but significant challenges remain, says Nahla Haidar, chairwoman of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Committee.
“I feel like I’m talking to a different country 10 years later,” she said following Fiji’s review yesterday.
“I have a feeling we’re on good track, sharpening the issues, identifying the problems and the constraints.”
Ms Haidar, who was the rapporteur for Fiji on the Committee 10 years ago, is urging widespread engagement with the committee’s upcoming recommendations to ensure continued progress for
Fiji’s women and girls. The CEDAW Committee’s Pacific Technical Cooperation Session ended yesterday.
Ms Haidar said areas of concern were climate change and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) which was not an issue 10 years ago.
“We know progress has happened but it needs to continue to happen.
“I have a feeling we’re on good track, sharpening the issues, identifying the problems and the constraints.”
Ms Haidar said the Committee would compile its recommendations and the concluding observations from the review would be released in June.
“Help the State party by disseminating them, discussing them, involving civil society organisations, and all other stakeholders to prepare a plan of action to implement those recommendations so when we meet again in a few more years to assess progress, we all feel we have done better.
“I wish the best for Fiji, its people, it’s women and girls.”
Echoing the chairwoman’s comments, Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection Sashi Kiran said the process for the 6th State Report to CEDAW was consultative.
“In the last two years, the amount of data the various ministries have collected, the gender-responsive budgeting that has been implemented across, you would see from our responses that there’s good results,” she said.
“In most situations, we’ve done well. There are still questions on women and leadership and that is a grey area, but we have been working hard to improve women’s leadership programs.
“The other is the TFGBV, there has been a lot of work. The experts themselves said as a country, Fiji has done far more and is setting the trend – not only developing the policies but we’re very action-oriented.”
