About the East-West Center

The East-West Center promotes better relations and understanding among the United States, Asia and the Pacific through collaborative study, research, and dialogue. Across Asia and the Pacific Islands, and at our campuses in Honolulu and Washington DC, the Center hosts conferences, exchanges, and in-depth trainings for policymakers, educators, cultural and civil-society leaders, and entrepreneurs. The Center conducts multidisciplinary research on environmental issues, public health, demography, economic policy and geopolitics, and provides graduate degree fellowships for the next generation of leaders. The Center also hosts the Pacific Islands Development Program—the focal point of EWC programming for Pacific nations, and the seat of the secretariat of the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders.

EWC and PROJECT Governance

The East-West Center is proud to join SPC, IFES, and CARE as part of the Blue Pacific Alliance implementing PROJECT Governance. EWC will lead four mutually reinforcing activities focused on supporting financial-governance offices and officials across the region:

• Financial Governance Training: A region-wide training program to enhance Pacific governments’ sovereign authority and law-enforcement capabilities to identify, investigate, and prosecute financial crimes, by strengthening national financial governance agencies and connecting them regionally through a Pacific Islands Financial Intelligence Network.
• Financial Media Training: Reporting tours and training programs in government investment and financial policies for Pacific investigative journalists and media professionals, expanding the independent media’s ability to inform the public on financial issues and hold governments and enforcement agencies accountable.
• PROJECT Governance Graduate Fellows: Equipping a core group of exceptional Pacific governance leaders through graduate degree fellowships for advanced degrees in management and finance.
• Blue Pacific Governance Gateway: An online platform to support, synergize, and sustain the full array of PROJECT Governance initiatives. The Gateway will serve as a digital meeting place and resource for networking, communications, and capacity development, and as the portal for sharing the digital tools and data developed across the project.

For more information about the East-West Center and PROJECT Governance, please contact us at [email protected].

Pacific Style-Advocacy is a three mins whiteboard animation produced by SPC’s Regional Rights Resources Team (RRRT).

The animation was developed as part of a Pacific Leadership Program (PLP) funded program entitled, “Implementation of the Pacific People Advancing Change (PPAC) to get across a simple but clear understanding of the concept of advocacy with the objective of inspiring people, CSOs and other groups that change is possible.

Sustaining Campaign Coalitions is a three mins whiteboard animation produced by the SPC’s Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT).The animation explains the core elements required for sustaining civil society coalitions focused on achieving certain goal/s for the community/social good.

Raising awareness through drama to combat violence against women and girls in the Solomon Islands.

Pacific education officials and curriculum development officers from Kiribati, the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI), and Tuvalu met in Fiji this week (7 to 10 August) to progress plans to integrate human rights and responsibilities into primary and secondary school curricula under the banner of “social citizenship education”.

The social citizenship education programme 2018-2021 is funded by the EUR 19.5million Pacific Partnership to End Violence against Women and Girls (Pacific Partnership), supported by the European Union (EUR 12.7m) with targeted support from the Australian Government (EUR 6.2m) and UN Women (EUR 0.6m).

On behalf of the delegations from Kiribati, RMI and Tuvalu, Mr Neaki Letia, Director of Education for the Government of Tuvalu, said “as we navigate the various implementation challenges ahead we must stay strong in our belief that children and young people can bring about positive social change. This workshop provided an opportunity for countries to share with and learn from each other as we plan towards a future where children and young people are agents of change.”

Plans to action the integration of social citizenship education into the school curriculum arose following a regional consultation held in April 2017 where education officials from 10 Pacific countries met to map a way forward for their countries to strengthen social citizenship through their national education curriculum. This week’s follow up workshop was attended by senior education officials and representatives from three Pacific countries who will now return to their respective countries and drive the action plans they have developed.

In welcoming the participants to the workshop, Ms Ingrid Swinnen, representative of the Delegation of the European Union for the Pacific said, “Ministries of Education in the Pacific are critical counterparts and drivers of this process because they best understand what suits their country context and education systems to deliver social citizenship education”.

Support to the social citizenship education programme will be provided by the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Regional Rights Resources Team (RRRT), in collaboration with SPC’s Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP) and the Social Development Programme (SDP).

“At SPC RRRT, we believe that our children and young people are ready to have conversations on social inclusion, human rights, gender equality and ending violence, within the classroom setting. The social citizenship component of the Pacific Partnership programme will help them to do this in an informed way and SPC RRRT is excited to be part of this initiative”, said SPC RRRT Director, Miles Young.

The Pacific Partnership programme brings together governments, civil society organisations, communities and other partners, to promote gender equality, prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG), and increase access to quality response services for survivors of violence. The programme’s three outcome areas are jointly implemented through a partnership between SPC RRRT, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (Forum Secretariat) and UN Women Fiji Multi-Country Office (MCO).

The social citizenship education programme is Outcome One of the Pacific Partnership programme, and aims to contribute towards shaping children and youth’s notions and awareness of human rights and responsibilities, gender equality, social inclusion and ending violence against women and girls in their communities.

Media contact:

Danica Waiti, Team Leader – Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Knowledge Management, [email protected] or +679 735 9860

Background Information:

The Pacific region has some of the highest rates of violence against women recorded in the world – twice the global average with an estimated two in every three Pacific women impacted by gender-based violence. Along with high rates of violence – a violation of human rights – women and girls in the Pacific region experience constant and continual inequalities including low levels of participation in decision making, limited economic opportunities, restricted access to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The Pacific Partnership to End Violence Against Women and Girls (Pacific Partnership) brings together governments, civil society organisations, communities and other partners to promote gender equality, prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG), and increase access to quality response services for survivors.

To achieve this, the Pacific Partnership aims to transform the social norms that allow violence against women and girls to continue; to ensure survivors have access to quality response services; and to support national and regional institutions to meet their commitments to gender equality and prevention of violence against women and girls. Working through partners, it will promote equal rights and opportunities for all Pacific people, through innovative approaches to education, access to essential services, and policy development.

The EUR€18.2 million partnership is primarily funded by the European Union (€12.7m) that supports all three outcome areas of the programme, with the Australian Government providing targeted funding to the second outcome (EUR€4.9m or AUD$7.6m) supported by UN Women (EUR€0.6m or USD$0.75m). The programme’s three outcome areas are jointly implemented through a partnership between the Pacific Community (SPC) Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT), Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (Forum Secretariat) and UN Women Fiji Multi-Country Office (MCO).