Increasing domestic violence in Solomon Islands is being blamed for the rise in the number of women and children seeking shelter in a care-centre in Honiara. The Church of Melanesia’s Christian Care Centre’s director, Sister Doreen Awaiasi, says she is having to turn people away as the centre is at full capacity. Sister Doreen says Read more
Bishop Paul Mea says his church will not support introducing the death penalty. He says there are other measures that can be taken to try to reduce violence in the community. The Kiribati parliament has passed the first reading of the bill and leaders are supposed to hold consultations with their electorate before the second Read more
The Catholic Church has long been fighting sorcery in Papua New Guinea. An Auckland academic says the real issue with violence against women in Papua New Guinea is not sorcery, but gender inequality. Evangelina Papoutsaki says unequal gender relations which are the result of the post-colonial times and Christianity, are being used to justify violence against Read more
Strip club owners the Chow brothers have dropped plans for a controversial, central-city, 15-floor super-brothel, in a last-minute backdown welcomed by opponents of Auckland’s burgeoning flesh trade. John Chow said a bruising liquor licensing battle had exhausted the brothers’ patience. “I think with the new liquor licence and the law change, we will be looking Read more
Former prostitutes and their advocates are calling for clients of sex workers to be prosecuted, saying the decriminalisation of the industry has failed them. Freedom from Sexual Exploitation director Elizabeth Subritzky told Parliament’s justice and electoral committee the only solution to the damage that prostitution caused, and the violence it created, was to prosecute buyers Read more
A global study conducted by ChildFund Alliance shows that more than a third of the 1000 New Zealand children surveyed said alcohol and bad behaviour were the two main contributors to violence while just under a third said drugs were among the main causes. Professor Sally Casswell of the Whariki Research Centre at Massey University Read more
Author, blogger and Pacific female advocate, Lani Wendt Young, has published a blog post criticising Deacon Kasiano Le’aupepe comments about sexual violence, which has fuelled support from Pacific females around the world. Le’aupepe, who Chairman of Samoa’s National Council of Churches, has urged girls and women to bite men who sexually assault them. “In fact”, he said “they Read more
A statistic based on a United Nations Multi-Country Study on Men and Violence led many to believe that one in four men admitted to sexual assault in Asia and the Pacific. But is this founded on evidence or merely a misreading of the research? Numbers, we’ve learned time and time again, can be deceiving. After Read more
The validity of United nations report on Gender Violence has been called into question by the President of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, John Momis. He says that since the Report has not yet been formally presented to the Government, he is not “prepared to go into a point by point rebuttal of the findings”. Read more
New initiatives to try to combat violence against women have been on the agenda of a UN meeting in Fiji last week. 26 representatives from six Pacific Island countries are in Suva to review national strategies and initiatives Melissa Alvarado, from the UN Women Fiji Multi Country Office is one of the Coordinators of the Read more