In this episode, Robin Davies speaks with Dr Fiona Hukula, the Gender Specialist at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.
In this episode, Robin Davies speaks with Dr Fiona Hukula, the Gender Specialist at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. Dr Hukula is a social anthropologist with a Doctorate from the University of St Andrews. Over more than 20 years, she has dedicated her career to policy and social research, focusing on gender-based violence, urban issues, and socio-legal studies in the Pacific region. Prior to her current role, she was a Senior Research Fellow and Program Leader at the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute.
Dr Hukula emphasizes the importance of understanding and integrating traditional Pacific cultural values into frameworks for addressing gender-based violence. She discusses the Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration (PLGED), a significant regional commitment aimed at advancing gender equality and women's empowerment, which was revitalised in 2023 to include broader commitments and accountability mechanisms. The updated declaration reflects the diverse priorities of the 18 member countries, addressing issues such as technology-facilitated violence and women's leadership across various sectors.
Dr Hukula also emphasises the need for inclusive approaches that engage men and boys as allies, and highlights the role of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat in supporting member countries and civil society organizations, providing a platform for coordination and policy development.
Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre. Our producers are Robin Davies, Amita Monterola, Jackie Hanafie and Finn Clarke. You can read and subscribe to our daily blogs on aid, international development and the Pacific at devpolicy.org, and you can follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. You can send us feedback and ideas for episodes to devpolicy@anu.edu.au.
Robin Davies: Today, I'm with Dr. Fiona Hukula, who is the gender specialist at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, a social anthropologist by training. Dr. Hukula has over 20 years of experience in Policy and Social Research with a focus on gender-based violence, urban issues and socio-legal studies in the Pacific. In her current role, she works closely with stakeholders across the Pacific to develop, track and improve policies relating to gender equality, while also supporting regional political leadership towards ending violence against women.
So welcome today. Can I just begin with a question about how your academic background as a social anthropologist has shaped your approach to addressing gender-based violence and sorcery accusation related violence in the Pacific?
Fiona Hukula: Thank you and thank you for having me. I think my social anthropology background has really given me the tools and enabled me to be able to really unpack a lot of issues relating to both gender-based violence and sorcery accusation related violence in Papua New Guinea. In the sense that I have the ability, or I gained the skills, to be able to really challenge some of the traditional ways of thinking. And when I say traditional, I mean in the context of the way in which gender-based violence is framed, in many ways, in a very western kind of context.
I think the training in social anthropology and ethnographic research has really allowed me to be able to ground the way I think about these issues in the context of my own people in Papua New Guinea. But I think also in my current role at the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat, it has enabled me to also think about these ways in the broader sense of how Pacific people view these issues.
Robin Davies: So I'm interested to hear more about that, I guess the versus the Western framing. Gender-based violence, how would you characterize the difference?
Fiona Hukula: So I think really thinking about gender-based violence or gender equality generally, it's around the way... And I think one of the key things for me is the duality of our worldviews and our existence. So in the sense that while we are very aware that we live in a world that is guided by, for example, with gender-based violence, our laws, our commitments, our international commitments, like CEDAW, we are also living in a world where our actions are framed by our culture, by faith, by our really, our ways of being as Pacific people.
Robin Davies: So is it partly about the actions one would take to prevent gender-based violence that you might draw upon the faith of the people that you're working with, that this is not so much a technocratic or legal response, it's a broader response?
Fiona Hukula: Absolutely, absolutely, and that's where you're right, where it's the response, and it's the way people think about harm, kinship, gender all across and so those are innovative ways that we can start to think about how we address gender-based violence. So as you rightly mentioned in a legalistic frame, is often how we think about it. So across the region, we, all of our countries, have some form of response, as in a formal system, whether it's we've all got laws, a referral system in place, but I think the challenge is ensuring that there's opportunities outside of this formal system for survivors or even for men who are perpetrators of violence to be able to address these issues. Because, firstly, access to justice is not the formal justice system is not available to everybody, and secondly, it might not be an option, in the sense that survivors don't necessarily want to go down that path.
Robin Davies: Now, I know your job is much broader than gender-based violence, but let's stay on this topic for just a moment. In an earlier episode of this podcast, I spoke with Daisy Plana from Family PNG and two of her staff about the situation in PNG, and it's evident that the incidence of family and sexual violence continues to be high and that the available services to support victims are barely touching the size. I mean, that's quite clear, despite the excellent work that Family PNG and others do. So the problem is at least well recognized in PNG, but perhaps not so well known in the rest of the Pacific, at least to an Australian audience. Can you just give maybe an overview of the situation across the Pacific and the responses across the Pacific?
Fiona Hukula: So I think this is one of the sort of challenges with Papua New Guinea being such a big country and that the media, academic research, there's a lot of focus on addressing gender-based violence, including sorcery accusation related violence. One of the things that I have from the three years of my time at the forum that I recognize very clearly is that, and through the consultations for the revitalized Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration, the pledge is that one of the key issues that is common across the Pacific is gender-based violence, or violence against women in different forms.
While in the Australian context, it may not be recognized as much as in Papua New Guinea, and I guess part of that's got to do with our very strong colonial history between the two countries, and of course, all of the work that goes on. The visibility is much more evident here in Australia. There is some great work that is going on to address gender-based violence within the Pacific. Fiji launched its national action plan last year. There's amazing work going on with the SafeNet response work in Solomon Islands, also work in Kiribati, the work that is being done in countries like RMI, Vanuatu.
So I think in terms of addressing violence against women, or gender-based violence, as I've mentioned, the concerted effort is there right across whether they're national efforts or regional kind of programming, and that's not just within support within government, but of course, the excellent work that civil society does to address gender-based violence.
Robin Davies: Is it about your role to support, I guess, networking among some of the key response organizations, like peer support networks?
Fiona Hukula: So our role at the forum is to provide a platform or support in terms of convening and coordinating. So we work across our primary stakeholders, if you like, are our member countries, our directors for women, but we also work to ensure that civil society is engaged in this space and to see where we can essentially support national actions as the PIF, but we are primarily policy, and so our sister organization, the Pacific Community, SPC, does a lot of the technical support for gender work in the region.
Robin Davies: And you talked about directors for women in the bureaucracies. In most countries, is there a specific department or ministry for women's empowerment or similar?
Fiona Hukula: In most countries, there is some. There are Ministries for Women, or they come under other sort of broader community development or internal affairs. And sothere are dedicated staff in all of our countries working on the gender agenda.
Robin Davies: You mentioned the Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration, which was adopted by the leaders at the leaders meeting last year in Cook Islands. This has been described as a revitalized declaration. I wonder what that means. Why did it need to be revitalized?
Fiona Hukula: So it's called a revitalized declaration because the declaration in itself is not a new commitment. So the leaders in 2012 committed to advancing gender equality and women's empowerment in the Pacific. But after 10 years, there was a review of this declaration, and it was an independent review, and there were three key findings that came from that review.
Firstly, that there was no visibility, so nobody knew what this specific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration is. Secondly, there was no ownership. So when I say ownership, I mean ownership from our countries, even though it was a commitment by our leaders and just generally, ownership by the general population, and that's relating, again, to this issue of visibility and really not knowing what the declaration is. And finally, the final key, or the third key finding, was that there was no governance oversight. So there was a commitment by leaders, but there was no accountability, and no way for reporting process to report back on the six key priorities that were identified in that original Declaration.
And so the Forum Secretariat was tasked to revitalize this declaration. And so the difference between the original Declaration from 2012 and the one that was endorsed last year, the revitalized pledge, is that firstly, we took an approach to widely consult with our members so the 18 Forum member countries to ensure that this declaration now reflects national priorities. And so it's really a broad document that now speaks to many other issues. So it's expanded from the original six.
I'll give you an example. In the first, the original Declaration, there was a focus on sexual and reproductive health for women. This current pledge now looks at women's health, or health generally. There are other issues such as the women peace and security agenda. Of course, gender-based violence is a key issue that is still relevant, but it's expanded to also ensure that new forms of violence against women are being considered, such as technology-facilitated violence.
So it's looking at it's a commitment that has 12 key commitments, but it's very broad. And as I said, it's because it's not that work is not being done in the region to address gender-based violence or gender equality. And so it's really building on what our member countries are already doing, but also taking into consideration that there are certain contexts that are specific to certain countries. So some of our countries have concerns around the nuclear legacy. Others are very specific to sea level rise, and so the declaration has tried to capture all of these issues that are in our region, but also have that gender lens. So how women and girls, men and boys are being affected.
Robin Davies: Is there also an element relating to women's representation in Parliament?
Fiona Hukula: So there's an element around women's leadership because one of the things that came out strongly from the consultations is that when we talk about women's leadership, there's a need to look at all aspects of women's leadership. And while there is a clear recognition around the lack of women in parliament, there was also discussions. There was also a lot of feedback around ensuring that we support women who are leaders at all different levels, so women who are leaders in their community, in their faith groups, in their clans, in private sector. And so we're talking about leadership at the broadest sense, which could include senior public service, absolutely.
Robin Davies: And likewise, in Australia, there's a lot of focus on the gender pay gap. Is that something that also figures in the declaration?
Fiona Hukula: So the declaration looks broadly again, at women's economic empowerment, so looking at how women's in the broader sense, how women can be better supported, whether they're in the private sector or the public sector. I think one of the things also we need to remember is that the majority of our women are in the informal sector. So they're fishing, they're doing small scale cottage industries and so where there is opportunity to support women again at all levels, because our declaration is also mindful that we need to be supporting women in our most remote areas, maritime, rural, the intersectionality of gender, women with disabilities, and so I think coming back to your question on economic empowerment, you know, the pay gap is one issue, of course, but as again, the declaration is looking at a very broad sense when we talk about women's economic empowerment, but again, recognizing that a lot of our women are not in the formal space when it comes to paid work.
Robin Davies: Now you've emphasized that part of the revitalization related to accountability, that this declaration has stronger accountability mechanisms associated with it. How is that done?
Fiona Hukula: So one of the ways in terms of operationalizing, we're developing our monitoring, evaluation and learning framework, but the reporting and the governance mechanism for the revitalized pledge is the Pacific Island Forum Women Leaders Meeting. So this is a standing meeting of the forum, and we report back on the progress of the implementation of the pledge through this forum, and because it's a standing meeting of the forum, the outcomes from the Pacific Island Forum Women Leaders Meeting channel up through to leaders.
Robin Davies: And women leaders, minister, or... Yes, this is a ministerial meeting. There are women who are ministers?
Fiona Hukula: So there's the Pacific Ministers for Women meeting which our colleagues at SPC have carried over and in this PIF Women Leaders Meeting. And so they are not necessarily ministers for women. For example, this year we had the meeting in RMI. We had the Labor Minister from PNG, Honorable Kessy Sawang. We had Minister for Justice from Samoa, but so we had the idea is to have women who are ministers, not necessarily ministers for women.
Robin Davies: And after they had reviewed progress, does a report go to the Pacific Leaders meeting?
Fiona Hukula: So the outcomes of yes, their meeting, goes up to leaders for their visibility. So at the moment, the key pieces of work that we're doing at the forum is to develop this MEL framework for reporting up and really just again, so that that's to ensure that our leaders have visibility of the work that's going on in the region to address gender equality, because they might not often have oversight. And what we do know is that there is a lot of work going on while it is an issue that's talked about a lot, gender equality, the work to ensure women and girls are safe, women and girls are economically empowered and in leadership has been ongoing for many years in the region, and so with this revitalized declaration, what we'd like to do is ensure that we capture all of the work that goes on in our member countries.
Robin Davies: So would you say that 2023, 24 is essentially a baseline year for the accountability mechanism?
Fiona Hukula: Yes. So this Pacific Leaders pledge is aligned to the 2050 strategy and so we are also working closely with my colleagues, the team who are developing the implementation plan for the 2050 strategy, to also align our work of monitoring the pledge.
Most of our countries have policies relating to gender equality, and those policies also come with their own MEL frameworks. It's about for us at the regional level, not overburdening our countries to report back, but it's about taking what they're already reporting on, whether it's through the Beijing reports, their own Country Reports, and then pulling out what's relevant for reporting to the leaders. That's for the MEL framework.
Robin Davies: I know that cross-country comparisons can be difficult and sometimes embarrassing for some countries, but they can also stir action. So when you present reports on progress against the declaration, will there be quite visible cross-country comparisons?
Fiona Hukula: So that's something that we're thinking about now as we develop the MEL framework. But look, I think that we can frame it in a positive way, in the sense that there's real opportunities for our countries to learn from each other. And I think you made that comment or statement earlier around the visibility and the knowledge of the issue of gender-based violence in PNG, right here in Australia. But I think with the regional work and with all the member countries, there is also that opportunity to learn through this pledge, how best countries can learn from each other, whether it's things like gender-responsive budgeting, or how countries are supporting their women entrepreneurs, those kind of things.
As much as it's important to sort of not embarrass each other, as much as it's important to sort of show the progress, I think, to really make this declaration useful for our countries, it's important for them to see where they can learn from each other and see that there are issues that while they're different in scale, they're still similar in many ways.
Robin Davies: Looking ahead for the next few years, where is the low-hanging fruit? Where would you hope to see the most progress on gender equality and women's empowerment?
Fiona Hukula: Oh, I think the low-hanging fruit, especially around women in leadership, women's economic empowerment and to address all of these different issues which are key, I would say supporting women's leadership in the private sector, very important. Because we can see, there was a recent report that the ADB launched on women's economic empowerment, women in the private sector, and we can see the progress. So I think where we can target initiatives and programs that are already showing signs of progress and success to continue, that's an important, very important thing.
Which we have, we recognize now, well, it's always, we've always recognized it, but we've put it in the declaration now, is to engage with men and boys. They're the gatekeepers, you know, for all kinds of things. Men and boys, because one of the key things that came out of this declaration was we went to all these different countries, and people said, well, you're talking about gender equality, and gender is both men and women. And in our Pacific societies, we talk about families, we've talked about our communities, we talk about our clans and tribes, and you cannot do that without talking about everybody.
And so one of the things also that's very clear in the declaration is the importance of social inclusion, and that's in our terms, in the region, meaning including everybody on this journey. And so I think in terms of low-hanging fruit, being very intentional, but Pacific way intentional in engaging with men and boys in different spaces, we know that's been happening in the gender-based violence space, but talking about issues relating to gender generally, so for men and boys is also one low-hanging fruit, if you can put it that way.
Robin Davies: What happens in primary and secondary school is particularly key to engaging, engaging boys.
Fiona Hukula: Yes, and that's the other I think low-hanging fruit is really targeting our young people, our young Pacific people, girls and boys, children. This is also another key thing that's come up in the discussions with our member countries is that we've got to be inclusive of children as well as early as possible to speak about these issues, to be able to engage them, to start thinking about these issues at a very early age.
Robin Davies: Now you refer to the 2050 strategy earlier, which is the Blue Pacific strategy. How does gender equality and women's empowerment figure in that strategy?
Fiona Hukula: So the 2050 strategy is our leaders' vision for us going forward, and gender equality and social inclusion, gender equality is the cross-cutting theme in the 2050 strategy. The revitalized Pacific Leaders Gender Equality declaration reflects the seven thematic areas of the 2050 strategy, so we have aligned the pledge based on those seven thematic areas. But again, as I mentioned earlier, taking into consideration the priorities, the national priorities of our countries.
Robin Davies: A question of development assistance in this field. Australia in particular supports a range of programs in the women's empowerment field, whether it's support for the Fiji Women's Crisis Center, Family PNG, support for women's leadership initiatives and so forth. I know you have to answer diplomatically about a major donor, but do you think donors in general have their priorities right? Is there more that could be done or could be oriented differently to achieve better outcomes?
Fiona Hukula: So I think that, and this is in the declaration, what we'd like to see is better alignment, and we'd like to see that donor priorities or donor support for gender equality is aligned to this pledge, but also to national priorities, which in many cases are. But the real, I think, challenge, is ensuring that there's coherence and coordination in the way that donor and development partner support is given to gender programming in the region.
And I think one of the important things to also think about and remember for Australia as the major donor in the region is that Australia is also a member of the forum. And so this declaration has also been committed to by the Prime Minister of Australia, and so there's many ways that Australia can in the support that Australia gives to us, which we are most grateful for. But I think there's also many opportunities for that cross-Pacific learning, the learning that we can also share with Australia and New Zealand as our other big developedforum member country on how we do our gender equality work in the region.
Robin Davies: Yes, I was at the 10th anniversary event for Family PNG. High Commissioner John Feakes showed a lot of humility about Australia's own situation in relation to gender-based violence.
I may or may not use this next piece, but I was just curious to ask you, what a day in the life of the gender specialist at the Forum Secretariat looks like. How do you actually allocate your time?
Fiona Hukula: Much of my time really has been focused on this revitalized declaration. So in the first year of my role at the forum was really the consultation process, and because we opted to go to all our member countries, we did. We went to 16 countries, to our French territories, we engage with them online, and so that took up a lot of time. And the real thinking about how to make sure that we are reflecting what our members are saying to us, and also getting consensus, getting consensus so that they can what we want to see is that our members, and I think more broadly, also our people, can see their priorities in that declaration.
So that was the sort of the last year took up a lot of time. Currently, it's developing this MEL framework that's really been the focus of my work this year. And again, because we're working with 18 countries, we're working with countries that are at different stages with their gender policies, their MEL frameworks, they've all got different MEL frameworks, and it's, again, our priority is not to overburden them. And so how can we come up with a MEL framework that reflects their priorities, but is able to capture broadly.
We recently ran the Pacific Island Forum Women Leaders Meeting, so that is one of our sort of key pieces of work that I work on as well and really supporting other members of the Forum Secretariat to ensure that there's a gender lens in the work that they do. But in a nutshell, my job really is to support countries' directors for women. So I spent 10 days in Nauru this year working with the Ministry for Women before they hosted the Micronesian Ministers for Women conference. So providing that kind of support to them.
Robin Davies: Once you finalize that MEL framework, would you hope to see donor programs align their own MEL frameworks with that? I mean, donors are famously rigid and individualistic about their MEL frameworks.
Fiona Hukula: Well, I mean, we've had some good discussions with our donor and development partners as well on how they can also contribute to ensuring that this revitalized pledge is being implemented. And I think this is a conversation that we will continue to have with them, and see also how we can align what we're doing, or how they can align to our work as well, especially the UN agencies.
Robin Davies: And my final question is really about the longer-term future. By the time you finish up in this role, however many years away that might be, what would you hope to have achieved? Or what change would you hope to have seen in that time?
Fiona Hukula: So, in the when I finish up in this role, or say, years down the track, what I would hope for the pledge, and I would see as something that is an achievement in the work that our team does at the Secretariat, is that when there's a review, those three key things that came up as the findings from the review of the original pledge will not be as prominent, meaning that there's visibility, and visibility meaning visibility beyond our member countries. So ensuring that civil society, academia, private sector, other people, are aware that there's a regional commitment to gender equality, ensuring that the governance mechanism is working so that accountability and that, and I think, a big achievement for us, our team would be ensuring that, or knowing that our member countries, our directors for women, our key stakeholders, are owning this declaration and it's not seen as something for PIFs, or it's a PIF thing, because we have carriage over the commitments of the leaders. But it's more so, that it's ours, it's all of ours, and that we're all working together to achieve gender equality.
So that's at that high level, but I think there are opportunities for those to show even more progress, for those low-hanging fruit, which may not be attributed to the work that we do, but we're seeing progress, more progress, in women in the private sector and leadership, stronger services, maybe more culturally sensitive and aware services for gender-based violence, those kinds of things. I think those I would count that as an achievement.
Robin Davies: I might ask one other question, if I may use it earlier in the recording, but Papua New Guinea is sometimes seen as a country that stands a little bit apart from membership and particularly on women's issues, on women's empowerment, gender equality and violence against women. Does PNG take its commitments in the forum context as seriously as every other country, or are they more focused on their domestic strategies?
Fiona Hukula: Well, that's a hard question for me to answer, because I've been there only for three years. Certainly in the work that we're doing with gender, addressing gender equality, in the years that I've worked at the forum, PNG has been engaged very much and was very engaged in the revitalization process. At the most recent Triennial and Ministers for Women, Pacific Ministers for Women and the PIF Women Leaders Meeting, we had two ministers from PNG come and PNG was announced as the next host of the Triennial in 2027.
I think, as you said, we're a big country. We've got a lot of issues. But again, PNG is a member of the forum and there are things that the forum can do to also maybe be more visible to Papua New Guinea and we've started with that work. Our DSG led a team earlier this year for Papua New Guinea and staff accompanied him to PNG to talk about the role of the forum, but also where our work can align better to PNG's priorities. But in terms of the engagement, PNG certainly does engage in not just the gender equality work, but they lead work in ICT, in fisheries at the regional level.
Robin Davies: All right. Well, just thank you very much, Fiona for speaking with us today, and all the best for the future.
Fiona Hukula: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Robin Davies: Great. Thanks. That's that. Thank you