Report by Pacific Media Centre Video report from Niklas Pedersen.
Report – By Niklas Pedersen in Suva
Fiji’s Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, Rosy Akbar, has branded Fiji’s crisis on violence against women as a “national shame”.
Figures from the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre shows more than 750 new cases of domestic violence just this year.
The minister spoke at this week’s third meeting of Interagency Taskforce on Elimination of Violence against Women and Children on Tuesday and called for a united stand against the crisis.
“Many times, we see, that though we work for the same cause, we work in different directions. That time has gone. We really need to come together as one,” said the minister.
“It’s not enough, that we meet up in this room, and when we walk out of the room, we have different agendas. That’s not going to work.”
On Wednesday, the Ministry for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation also signed a bilateral agreement with Australia and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
One of the goals with that agreement is to combat domestic violence in Fiji.
Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.
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