The Marshall Islands Judiciary building in Majuro which houses the High Court, Traditional Rights Court and District Court. Photo: Marshall Islands. Photo: RNZ Pacific/Giff Johnson
Despite a high rate of domestic violence in the Marshall Islands, only a handful of women come forward to gain court offered protections against abusive partners.
There was an uptick in the number of civil petitions filed by women in 2025 seeking temporary protection orders. This follows an all-time low in 2024, when just a single domestic violence case was brought by a woman to the High Court for a protection order, according to High Court statistics.
The year just ended saw an increase to six petitions filed by women seeking protection - including two during December.
But the trend the past several years has been well below the number of petitions filed by women with the High Court in the mid-2010s. Information from the past 10 years shows that in the three years from 2016-2018, 40 women brought forward motions to the High Court seeking temporary protection orders against violent partners. The most recent three years, 2023-2025, fewer than half this number of women - 16 - came forward seeking court protection.
The drop in High Court petitions from women seeking protection orders the past three years does not appear to sync with both published and anecdotal reports of ongoing domestic violence in the community.
The 2022 US Human Rights report on the Marshall Islands, for example, cited a World Health Organization report that "estimated that 38 percent of ever-married or partnered women ages 15 to 49 had experienced intimate-partner violence in their lifetime, and 19 percent had experienced it in the previous 12 months".
Still, clearly fewer women are seeking court assistance since the number peaked at an all-time high of 16 in 2017. The most recent year with double digit domestic violence petitions to the High Court was 2021 with 15. The number ranged from one to nine case after 2021.
This table, from the 2025 Pacific Gender Outlook issued by UN Women and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, shows that one-in-five ever-partnered women and girls in the Marshall Islands have experienced physical or sexual abuse, a figure considerably lower than other recent reports on gender based violence in the Marshall Islands. Photo: RNZ Pacific/Giff Johnson
Many factors are involved in the challenge most women find to take action against abusive partners. One significant change in modern times is many women, when they marry, go to live with the family of the male partner, which eliminates the protection of the woman's immediate family members who are not present. Traditionally, in times gone by, men moved in with the woman's family.
In addition, there is an attitude that a husband is disciplining his wife by beating her, and older generation family members may brush it off as nothing. This is often coupled with shame many women feel from their family members for seeking help, according to local women who have experienced violence in their families.
December saw two domestic violence petitions filed by women with the High Court, which brought the total number to six, although one of these was not followed through by the complainant.
