Transcript
The latest meeting of the Young Women's Forum resulted in a declaration to be used as a lobbying tool for the participants to raise issues with their leaders in the build up to this year's national elections. Chandra Fisiiahi from Emerging Leaders Forum Alumni says three areas were highlighted as the main concerns for young women.
"The declaration is a collective document, the voices of the young women participants as to what are the issues that they face daily such as economic security, health services, government decision making spaces."
The forum is co-convened by Diverse Voices and Action for Equality, the Emerging Leaders Forum Alumni and femLINKpacific's Young Women in Leadership team. The Fiji Young Women's Forum has been running since 2012 and a recurring issue each year has been the rural and urban divide in Fiji. A statement from the co-convener of femLINKpacific, Alisia Evans, said the location of this year's forum shifted to Labasa in order to highlight rural voices.
"The rural-urban divide particularly in terms of access to information and communication has been a consistent barrier that limits rural young women's awareness of their basic human rights. This consultation was an opportunity to inform young women on their rights, support their capacity to exercise their rights as citizens as well as hold government to account to their gender equality commitments in the National Gender Policy."
Audrey Seru from Diverse Voices and Action for Equality says another barrier rural young women face is a lack of opportunity or participation in decision making spaces.
"Young women don't have access to these spaces. This is because of... some of the reason could be due to their sexual orientation, gender identity, sexual characteristics, ethnicities, but people will really be saying, it is due to their age."
Ms Seru says for young women living in the urban parts of Fiji, they have access to safe spaces, but their opportunities to exercise their voice on issues is still restricted.
"As for the urban, they create their safe spaces. They have access to information, but they are still not included in decision making process, so this space for young diverse women to be recognised as their safe space to voice out their issues."
A stronger collaboration with women's rights groups and areas such as health, government and private sector was requested in the declaration. Ms Fisiiahi says young women have important knowledge on their own issues and experiences and it needs to be heard and considered to move towards solutions.
"These issues are personally lived issues, which is reality in both rural and urban areas. With those issues, the young women give recommendations themselves to what the solutions can be and for the participants to take back with them to their communities to share."
Nineteen young women of all diversities convened for this year's forum and when the declaration does go out to the public is yet to be confirmed.
