Pacific Island Countries: Shifting the Power Coalition

About

Since 2016 Pacific Island Women Leaders have been supported to lead disaster management, humanitarian, and climate action. Our work has reaffirmed the need to:

  • Sustain Resourcing – Expand long-term, sustainable, and flexible funding for women’s organisations and coalitions working across climate change, humanitarian and security nexus;
  • Support Locally-led priorities – Support women’s organisations to set their own agenda on climate change, disaster risk reduction and humanitarian action;
  • Streamline processes – Minimise administrative burdens by streamlining funding applications and reporting requirements; and
  • Dialogue & learn – Create opportunities for dialogue and learning with other partners working on similar priorities.

Drawing on the leadership of Pacific Island women to lead local responses in the midst of COVID-19 and the climate crisis we will establish the first Pacific women’s regional surge roster. Guided by our feminist principles the programme will invest in increasing the capability of diverse Pacific women to lead gender responsive and inclusive humanitarian responses and bring specialist skills in times of crisis at country and regional level.

We are also uplifting Pacific Island women’s innovation with appropriate and accessible multi-hazard, early-warning systems. Our Pacific Owned, Women-Led Early Warning & Resilience (POWER) Systems platform will enable more Pacific Island women to connect local and traditional climate knowledge with climate services and weather information to convey climate and disaster updates in local and accessible language. It is also building a strong network of young women leaders to drive forward climate related information through a range of ICT platforms.

Impact

The Shifting the Power Coalition (StPC) is driving transformative change across the Pacific by empowering diverse women to lead in disaster management, humanitarian, and climate action. Through its efforts, the Coalition has increased women’s visibility, influence, and leadership at every level, ensuring that their voices are central to decision-making processes and responses to crises.

Rapid Response Grants provided by the Shifting the Power Coalition have had significant impacts in empowering women and young women to lead localized crisis responses and long-term recovery efforts across the Pacific. In Tonga, the Talitha Project utilized these grants to conduct rapid protection assessments, distribute essential supplies, and offer trauma healing support following the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption, significantly aiding displaced communities. Similarly, in Bougainville, the grants enabled the Bougainville Women’s Federation to deliver critical humanitarian assistance, including dignity kits and protection services, to vulnerable groups affected by floods and volcanic ashfall, ensuring that women-led networks could effectively respond to multiple hazards.

Through the provision of Core Support Grants, partners like the Vanuatu Disability Promotion & Advocacy Association (VDPA) have been empowered to drive disability inclusion and advocacy at both provincial and national levels. This support has enabled VDPA to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Vanuatu Ministry of Justice and Community Services, enhance collective regional advocacy with the Pacific Disability Forum, and actively engage in the Sanma Provincial Government’s emergency COVID-19 clusters. These efforts are critical in ensuring that women with disabilities are included in response teams and that their voices are central to disaster preparedness and response initiatives.

Attribution

The Shifting the Power Coalition is supported by Pacific Women Lead, Home Planet Fund, and the Global Fund for Women.

Visit the Shifting the Power Coalition website here

Shifting the Power Together: Pacific Women-Led Responses to COVID-19  

The Shifting the Power Coalition Handbook, produced with the support of the Feminist Humanitarian Network, presents lessons learnt from the Samoa response to the 2019 measles pandemic and how the STP Coalition has played a role in documenting the gendered impacts of the health emergency and gaps in the response.

The handbook also draws from experiences of partners in Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu responding to Tropical Cyclone Harold which brought additional challenges to COVID-19 prevention and response efforts. Many of these recommendations were featured in the Coalition’s advocacy brief.

The handbook is a tool to guide engagement with the ongoing COVID-19 response and prevention of future disasters with specific sections dedicated to women with disabilities as well as young women.

Read the Handbook Here

Shifting the Power Coalition: Getting Climate Smart

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Shifting the Power Coalition: Communicating Local Priorities and making Global Connections

In collaboration with the Generation Equality Forum Civil Society Advisory Group, with the support of the NGO-CSW Committee, Shifting the Power Coalition partners convened “On the Mat” consultations to connect local and national priorities with global commitments to support diverse women’s leadership on Peace and Security.

Humanitarian Action Compact with Coalition partners collectively calling for:

  • Accessible and inclusive communications
  • Safe spaces for women and girls in all their diversities.
  • Financing locally-led, women-led responses.
  • Building strong networks of local women leaders to strengthen engagement in national humanitarian spaces such as the cluster system and push back against INGO led spaces
  • Valuing women’s indigenous and localised knowledge
  • Recognising women’s organisations as critical actors in localising WPS and humanitarian action.
  • Going beyond gender equality approaches to intersectional ones that lift up the experiences and agency of diverse women, including women with disabilities, young women, rural women and LGBTIQ communities.
  • Through our partnerships with the Feminist Humanitarian Network and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict we will continue to amplify local strategies to reinforce the power and voice of feminist movements and young women in the implementation of the WPS and Humanitarian Action Compact.

Our Partnerships Principles

StPC is building an inclusive, feminist model of partnership and collaboration. This requires listening to diverse women’s voices and creating safe, intergenerational spaces in which to learn and develop together. The Coalition helps women get the resources they need—including the time and space to meet and the funding to drive their own priorities—to participate, deliberate, design, and deliver what works for women and their local communities.

Our Feminist Partnership Principles are:

  • Feminist collaboration – listening to, and learning from, one another
  • Diversity – leading to new values and perspectives
  • Equity – leading to respect
  • Openness – leading to trust
  • Mutual benefit – leading to commitment
  • Courage – leading to innovation

The women we work with

The Shifting the Power Coalition brings together 13 women from six Pacific Nations to share their experiences, collaborate and amplify recommendations. Check out the work these women are doing in the video below.

Where:

Pacific Island Countries

Our Partners:

The Pacific Disability Forum and 12 women-led civil society organisations from across the Pacific Islands: ActionAid (Australia and Vanuatu); Bougainville Women's Federation, the Fiji Disabled People’s Federation; Hauskuk Initiative, Nazareth Centre for Rehabilitation; the Talitha Project; Transcend Oceania; the YWCA of Solomon Islands; Vanuatu Young Women for Change; the Vanuatu Disability Promotion and Advocacy Association; and Vois Blong Mere Solomon.

When:

2016 – ongoing

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This project is supported by the Australian Government and ActionAid Australia

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